tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-128847242018-04-20T21:43:46.026-07:00Travel storiesA sampling of first-person pieces from Asia to Latin America to Africa, including accounts of scaling a mountain to Fidel Castro's secret rebel headquarters, nearly getting stranded in the deserts of Namibia, and failed efforts to camp in Iceland.David Abelnoreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-58359071946431477732015-04-29T20:18:00.002-07:002015-04-29T20:18:12.690-07:00Into the Darkness<header style="border: 0px; color: #464646; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 10px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="header new" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h1 class="main-hed" itemprop="headline" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Miller Headline Bold', 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.6em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.04347826; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Swimming underground in a sapphire serenity</h1></div></header><div class="article-body" style="border: 0px; clear: both; float: left; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 761.109375px;"><aside class="tools" style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: transparent; display: inline-table; float: left; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline; width: 761px;"><ul class="Top tools primary-tools" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: table-cell; float: left; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; 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background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: contain; border: 0px; color: transparent; display: block; height: 13px !important; list-style: none; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 13px !important;"></span><span class="bg-visuallyhidden" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; list-style: none; margin: -1px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1px;">PRINT</span></a></aside><figure class="figure lead-figure full" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px 20.671875px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 761.109375px;"><img alt=" " data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2015/04/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1110813.JPG" itemprop="contentUrl" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2015/04/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1110813.JPG" style="border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" /><figcaption class="figcaption" style="border: 0px; font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="border: 0px; color: #999999; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula has thousands of cenotes. Pictured, bathers in Cenote Samula, near Chichen Itza.&nbsp;</div></figcaption></figure><div class="byline" style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: #999999; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><b class="author" style="border-right-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-right-style: solid; border-width: 0px 1px 0px 0px; color: black; display: inline; letter-spacing: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 5px 0.25em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 5px 0px 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline;">By&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/staff/abel" rel="author" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;" title="More Stories by David Abel"><span itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel</span></a></b>&nbsp;GLOBE STAFF |&nbsp;<time datetime="2015-04-18 22:00" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: 0px; display: inline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APRIL 18, 2015</time><div style="border: 0px; font-size: 12px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border: 0px; font-size: 12px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div></div><div class="article-text" itemprop="articleBody" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div id="U803223697508PIG" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">YUCATAN PENINSULA, Mexico — A hand-painted arrow on the wooden sign pointed down a desolate road.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A few wrong turns later, while bumping along in our rental car, a middle-aged man in a baseball hat rolled up on a bicycle. I lowered the window.</div><a href="" id="skip-target1" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"></a><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Where’s the cenote?” I asked in Spanish.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He gestured for me to make a U-turn. “Follow me,” he said.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The rutted road gave way to dirt that became a grassy field strewn with large rocks, until they became too big to pass.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We got out of the car, and the man signaled for us to follow him again. We passed a grove of tropical trees, a copse of flowering plants, and followed a narrow path that led to a large hole in the ground. There was no one else in the visible distance.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My wife, Jess, decided to stay behind with our 2-year-old son, Wolfy. I followed the man down a set of stone steps into the darkness of a sprawling cave. There were a few feeble lights strung up overhead, allowing me to see the shadows of bats swooping through the chasm.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I followed him deeper along a winding, increasingly wet path, over boulders and beside stalagmites and stalactites, until I could see a sapphire glow in the distance. It was why I had come.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We walked gingerly down a flight of slippery, manmade steps. When we reached the bottom, I breathed in the cool air and kicked off my shoes. Before me was something like a secret oasis, a turquoise pool that shimmered like jewels in the ambient light.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was one of some 6,000 so-called cenotes — a Mayan word for wells — that are scattered throughout the Yucatan Peninsula. Most of the network of subterranean rivers and freshwater sinkholes formed thousands of years ago where the region’s limestone bedrock collapsed.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Sac-h’a Cenote on the outskirts of Valladolid was the first of more than a dozen cenotes we explored on a recent road trip through the Yucatan, from Cancun in the east to Merida in the west to Tulum in the south.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some are hidden underground in deep caverns best explored with scuba gear, while others are concealed by the jungle and require machetes to find. There are those that have been overrun by tourists and those that have become polluted as dumping grounds for neighbors.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nearly all feel like sacred places, amphitheaters of rock filled with cool, crystal-clear water, idyllic swimming holes like something conjured from the 1980s movie “The Goonies.”</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As we made our way west along the free highway that connects Cancun with Merida, we came across another handmade sign for a cenote called Fantasma.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Several miles later, we followed another sign that pointed to another dirt road. This one was even less inviting, with small craters, thick roots, and sharp rocks. When we reached a small clearing in the woods that seemed like a place to park, Jess suggested I go alone again. This time I brought my bathing suit.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Several hundred feet down an unmarked path, I came across an elderly man sitting in the shade. He suggested I follow him into another hole in the limestone. He shuffled down the scree into the darkness.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There were more light bulbs strung above, but the entrance served as a natural skylight. There was also a sturdy wooden staircase that led deep into the sprawling cave, which was empty aside from the two of us. A vast silence made my breathing feel heavy.&nbsp;</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Near the bottom, we reached a platform. In the dim light, I could see a plank of wood stretching over the water, which was about 15 feet below.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="wide" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Sac-h’a Cenote" data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_1920w/Boston/2011-2020/2015/04/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1110680.JPG" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_1920w/Boston/2011-2020/2015/04/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1110680.JPG" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><div class="figcaption" style="border: 0px; font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="border: 0px; color: #999999; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF&nbsp;</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Stairs leading to Sac-h’a Cenote, on the outskirts of Valladolid.</div></div></div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Is it safe?” I asked the man in Spanish.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He smiled and nodded.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I changed into my bathing suit and handed him my camera. Then I walked to the edge and leaped into the inky abyss.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The cool water provided an instant balm, a release to all the stresses above ground. I floated for a while, splashing in the silence, and then swam around my private pool, careful to avoid the sharp stalagmites from below.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I took a few more dives into the clear, rain-fed water, and then followed the man back up and out.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Farther down the road, we came upon a sign advertising “Turismo Rural.”</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There were pictures of the Cenote Suytun, another yawning void of rock and bright blue water. I decided this time to take my son, who was now wide awake and itching to be freed from his car seat.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We had to pay about $5 to enter, and there were cabanas and vendors selling sombreros and other kitsch. I carried him down a steep staircase, promising adventure. He started asking for Mommy about halfway down and held me tightly as we descended into the eerie glow of natural skylights illuminating turquoise water.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He wasn’t as enchanted as I had hoped. A knee-deep stone platform stretched into the center of the cenote, where dozens of catfish gathered and kissed my toes. He started to scream as I waded in and carried him across the platform. Then he pooped in his diaper.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not quite the sublime moment of father-son bonding I had envisioned.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jess was consumed by a book and not particularly interested in cenotes. But it was my birthday, so she was willing to humor me as we pressed on.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We went to one cenote that was so hard to find we had to follow a taxi deep into the jungle. All the surrounding vegetation made it hard to spot, even when we were a few steps away. Unlike the others, however, it wasn’t inviting. The stagnant water was coated in algae and covered by clumps of vines, as if it hadn’t been disturbed in millennia.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The closer we came to Chichen Itza, the famous Mayan ruins, the more we ran into tourists. One popular cenote featured a welcome center, parking lot, playground, showers, and food stalls. Another had zip lines, kayak rentals, and a campground.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some cenotes had storied histories. There were those with lore that they were once used for human sacrifice to Mayan gods; others were said to have been repositories for the remains of dinosaurs, which roamed the region until a massive asteroid hit the peninsula 66 million years ago.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My obsession with cenotes started several years before on a trip to Tulum, a laid-back beach town that has become a mecca for hippies and yuppies. After visiting the nearby Mayan ruins, Jess and I followed a sign to what seemed like an empty field and found the well of a spiral staircase.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We had no idea where we were going or what we were about to see. The hair stood up on the back of my neck as we descended into the darkness deep underground. We followed dim lights toward the damp air and discovered what felt like a holy place: a cavernous limestone chamber with sunlight streaking through holes in the ground above and illuminating the cobalt water below us. It beckoned me, and I didn’t want to leave.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After more than a week in the Yucatan, we had visited cenotes with alluring names, such as the “Temple of Doom” and the “Garden of Eden.” Jess and Wolfy mainly watched or did their thing as I jumped off cliffs and plummeted through small openings in the limestone. Toothless Garra rufa fish provided a free, unwanted pedicure at one cenote; at others, I watched scuba divers disappear below the surface.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By the end of our trip, with Jess and Wolfy’s patience exhausted, I visited the last on my own.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cenote Azul, about an hour south of Cancun, lived up to its name. In the bright sunlight, the pools beneath the cliffs glimmered with hues that ranged from aquamarine to indigo.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I dived in and snorkeled over the limestone bottom, luxuriating in the fresh water until dusk. Then the mosquitoes came, and it was time to go home.</div><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><i style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel can be reached at&nbsp;<a class="a" href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter&nbsp;<a class="a" href="http://twitter.com/davabel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">@davabel</a>.</i></div></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-34507705185881911312014-07-05T17:41:00.000-07:002014-01-12T12:57:31.135-08:00Overcoming Nausea <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-36R-5IvJKFs/UddnHSZ6J6I/AAAAAAAAUJc/_azUwWjM8-g/s1600/mexico.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-36R-5IvJKFs/UddnHSZ6J6I/AAAAAAAAUJc/_azUwWjM8-g/s640/mexico.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></span></a><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Click here for more pictures of <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/117528831952772399065/CentralAmerica?noredirect=1" target="_blank">Central America</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel |&nbsp;Globe Staff | 4/29/2012</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div id="page1" style="line-height: 21px;"><div class="firstGraph"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>CANCÚN, Mexico</b> — It was like reverse schadenfreude, in which I experienced a twinge of pain from the pleasure others took in my apparent good fortune.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Everyone we told seemed elated, while I was apprehensive, feeling the urge to escape — preferably far away.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Which is how, on my 40th birthday, I found myself in a bar that I had not visited since college. I sat there, staring into a shot of tequila, a liquid fire I hoped would free me from the anxiety that had been building in the few weeks since my wife, Jess, had told me she was pregnant.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Techno music thumped from speakers that felt like they were everywhere and an order of magnitude louder than the last time I had stopped at Señor Frog’s in Cancún, where we had just arrived to start a three-week trip through southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We decided to call our winter getaway late last year a babymoon, which Wikipedia defines as “a vacation taken by a couple that is expecting a baby, in order to allow the couple to enjoy a final trip together before the many sleepless nights that usually accompany a newborn.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was the prospect of such stress and the accompanying mayhem that had long dissuaded me from taking the plunge into parenthood, a looming reality I was reminded of on the flight down as we watched an exhausted father struggle to keep infant twins from wailing and a restless toddler full of food on his face from a tantrum.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Your life is about to completely change,” he told me, after Jess smiled adoringly at the children and told his wife we were expecting.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like a prophecy, his words reverberated over the next few weeks and left me more determined to relish this last jaunt of freedom — this pause before true adulthood — on which we could do whatever we pleased.</span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wikipedia says babymoons usually take place “at a resort that offers appropriate services, like prenatal massage.” We were going a different route, one that included 15-hour bus rides into a remote jungle, climbing waterfalls in caves while holding candles, and getting soaked on small boats as we cruised down an alligator-infested river in a tropical storm.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the tequila — Jess, of course, was neither drinking nor craving an escape — we walked along the main boulevard of the hotel zone in Cancún, which felt like a ghost town the week before Christmas with what seemed like more soldiers than tourists. (Although the drug war has transformed parts of Mexico into a war zone, with government estimates of nearly 50,000 people dead since 2006, we never felt unsafe.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we took a ferry across the turquoise waters to Isla Mujeres, where we toured the small island in a golf cart and snorkeled with parrot fish. As we roved around, I found myself staring at couples with small children, wondering how they did it, whether we would have to give up our itinerant journeys, much-needed respites that provide those few deep breaths from our daily routines.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div id="page2" style="line-height: 21px;"><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At dinner that night, we met a couple from France eating al fresco, with their baby in a stroller. They looked the picture of familial harmony, until the little boy, who could not have looked more blissful, inexplicably erupted in tears.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’m not going to lie to you,” his mother told us. “There are trying times. But you don’t have to give up your life.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We headed a few hours south on the Yucatan coast and spent the next few days in the tranquil town of Tulum, where the factory-like hotels and package tourism of Cancún gave way to bungalows on the beach and more backpackers than families.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We did all the things a childless couple can do: We dined at trendy restaurants for as long as we wanted, read and ran on white-sand beaches, and explored well-preserved Mayan ruins and a large barrier reef full of stingrays and colorful coral.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We rented a car and searched for cenotes, ancient freshwater swimming holes that formed underground where the limestone bedrock had collapsed. The first one we visited would have been hard to find without a sentry pointing to a small opening in a stretch of dirt that led to a spiral staircase, which wound a few hundred feet below ground. At the bottom, a small vestibule led to a large opening, which looked like an underground amphitheater filled with a pool of perfectly clear water.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Free of concerns, we snorkeled in an open-air cenote that runs under a road into the ocean and luxuriated at another inside a vast cave, where bats hid in the large, dangling stalactites and flashlights were needed to avoid sharp stalagmites piercing the water. They felt like secret swimming pools, majestic places that seemed almost unreal — conjured from the 1980s classic movie “The Goonies.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we were ready, we boarded an overnight bus for an 11-hour trip west to Palenque, an ancient Mayan outpost in the Mexican state of Chiapas. When we awoke in this city carved out of the jungle, we found a hotel, showered, and left within the hour for a daylong tour of millennium-old temples, a towering waterfall called Misol-Ha, and a paradisiacal place called Agua Azul, where a bright blue river tumbles over a series of small waterfalls.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a lush land full of beauty, I found myself transfixed by something else: The little girl helping her mother carve mangos and sell them on sticks like lollipops; giggling children jumping off a rope swing; a boy bursting with exuberance as he helped his parents stuff candy into a piñata.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day, after a minivan trip up a long, dizzying road through steep mountains, we strolled the cobblestone streets of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Here the legacy of Spanish rule persists in the colonial architecture, the influence of the rebel Zapatistas remains visible in the graffiti, and the effect of a surge in tourism drifts out of the myriad restaurants in scents of freshly brewed cappuccino, newly baked croissants, and pepperoni pizza.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div id="page3" style="line-height: 21px;"><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, I could not help aiming my camera at what struck me as more compelling: the delight of two girls dressed like princesses out on the town with their similarly dressed, proud mother; the blissfulness of babies being cradled by their parents at the night market; the precociousness of the children hawking bracelets and other trinkets.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By the time we crossed the border into Guatemala and boarded a boat to navigate Lake Atitlan, where shadows from the surrounding volcanoes float in the cobalt water, Jess began to notice my budding interest in children. She smiled with some relief when I showed her my pictures of a boy devouring a hunk of watermelon and a girl staring through binoculars larger than her head.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I hope this is a good sign,” she said.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kids can be adorable — I know from having nieces — but won’t they rob me of my solace, end my well-honed independence, suck the joy out of traveling?</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">During an afternoon roaming around the colonial center of Antigua, the capital of the country before Guatemala City, we met a British woman carrying a large backpack on her chest and a baby in a floppy hat strapped to her back. I was amazed and asked how she managed.</span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“You have to continue living the way you want,” she said.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She pointed to a large red mark on her son’s forehead and offered advice for traveling with children in the developing world: “Carry around a mosquito net.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On another minivan trip to see sprawling caves and underground rivers in central Guatemala, we met a couple from South Africa traveling with their young daughter, who eagerly introduced us to her mascot for the trip, Papa Smurf. The three had spent the past month traveling around the country — by motorcycle.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Children are very adaptable,” the mother said, as her daughter consumed a bag of Cheetos.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They didn’t hit the bars much anymore, she admitted, but they insisted on doing what they would have without a child. “You just have to bring enough toys,” she said.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the next few days in Guatemala, I took note of the resilience of small children who accompanied their parents on an hourlong trek up a peak overlooking the turquoise river in the region known as Semuc Champey, the mischievous impulses of young boys exploding firecrackers in the Afro-Caribbean community of Livingston, and the serenity of a single mother from Utah shepherding her teenage daughters across rutted roads and bumpy rivers.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By the time we arrived in Belize, I began to think that having children was not the end of the world as I have known it, that it could be less a millstone than a source of pride, even a new kind of pleasure.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we made our way from Punta Gorda, a sleepy town in southern Belize, to Caye Cauker, another backpacker redoubt off the northern coast, I basked in my lingering freedom: kayaking in the sunset, sailing on a booze cruise, snorkeling with sharks, barracuda, and other large fish. We awoke and went to sleep when we wanted, wandered about in whatever direction seemed pleasing, and lapped up the peace of having no worries.</span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was a good run, I thought.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the boat back to Belize City, I met a Belizian woman about my age on her way home to see her children.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I told her I was about to become a father, she smiled. She told me about the hardships. About the costs. And about the things you have to give up.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Everything is going to change,” she said. “But it’s going to change for the better. It will be the best thing you ever do.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All I could do was hope she was right.</span></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><em style="font-style: italic;"><br /></em><em style="font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at&nbsp;<a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="color: #2851a2; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter<a href="http://twitter.com/davabel" style="color: #2851a2; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_new">@davabel</a>.</em></span></div></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-71881203159005986462014-01-01T09:17:00.000-08:002014-01-27T16:53:05.750-08:00The trials of traveling with a baby <div class="header" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #464646; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1TjgupRd6D4/UsRMoILCARI/AAAAAAAAUeA/jrn0BY68mJk/s1600/IMG_0482.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1TjgupRd6D4/UsRMoILCARI/AAAAAAAAUeA/jrn0BY68mJk/s640/IMG_0482.PNG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><h2 class="author" style="border: 0px; display: inline; letter-spacing: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0px; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24.639999389648438px;">Click here for more pictures from <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/117528831952772399065/Thailand?noredirect=1">Southeast Asia</a></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24.639999389648438px;">.</span></h2><h2 class="author" style="border: 0px; display: inline; letter-spacing: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0px; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline;">&nbsp;</h2><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #464646; line-height: 32.5px;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-size: small;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;Aug. 3, 2013</span></span></div></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br /><nav class="cats-first" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #464646; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625;"><b>BANGKOK</b> — His moon-shaped face turned red and sweaty and his toothless mouth opened wide, issuing moans that became grunts that begat a howling that reached octaves I had not known were in the repertoire of human sound.</span></nav><nav class="cats-first" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #464646; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625;"><br /></span></nav><nav class="cats-first" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #464646; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625;">After 10 airports, thousands of miles crossed by planes, boats, buses, and trucks, Wolf, our 5-month-old son, had had enough.</span></nav><br /><div class="article-body" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.625;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.625;">We were now in a taxi, inching through an hourlong traffic jam that stretched from the airport to downtown. The longer we idled, the louder he wailed. For a boy who liked to be bounced, carried, swung — anything involving movement — hell was being confined to a carseat, going nowhere, especially in stifling heat.</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“So, do you have children?” my wife, Jess, asked the taciturn taxi driver, after every trick — pacifier, bottle, singing, even baby iPhone apps — failed to calm our baby<a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/08/03/you/pr2rxEwaQKlm66njHQs6MK/story.html" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; display: inline !important; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.30769231; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">.</a></div><div id="skip-target" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are good reasons to avoid traveling halfway across the planet with an infant: exposure to exotic germs and less than ideal environments; jet lag that can interrupt a sleep schedule for weeks or longer; parental sanity that can quickly give way to self- and mutual loathing.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Over three weeks traveling through Southeast Asia earlier this year, we endured the full gamut of anguish, from sleepless flights that spanned continents to an emergency visit to a hospital full of insects. But we would experience emotions neither of us expected: a giddy exuberance from the affection showered on us by strangers; elation from watching our son light up with spontaneous excitement; and a surge of pride when he learned to roll over and began to perform, strangely, a kind of jig that looked like tap dancing.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As veteran travelers who worried about losing the call of the road after having children, we had bought our tickets before Wolf was born. We knew we were in for a measure of torture, but we figured it would build parenting chops. We also had the benefit of traveling for much of the trip with Jess’s family, including her brother, a doctor, and her sister-in-law, a pediatric nurse from Thailand.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“There’s nothing to worry about,” my sister-in-law promised before we left, reminding us that they had taken their babies to Thailand.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Our trip began with a 13-hour flight from Boston to Tokyo on a Boeing 787, a few weeks before all the Dreamliners were grounded because of battery problems. We had plenty of time to admire the cabin’s mood lighting and the large windows that darkened by touch, as Wolfy wanted to play for all 13 hours — without a wink of sleep.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By the time we landed in Bangkok, we had resorted to an iPhone app featuring a kind of psychedelic bear that floated on the screen in hearts and stars. It kept him occupied for long stretches, even as the accompanying electronic lullaby drove us mad. We arrived in the evening, but Wolfy knew it was morning his time. After finally learning to sleep through the night, we were back at the beginning, making our night long and restless.</div><div class="figure" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em -82.03125px 2em 24.1875px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 362.984375px;"><img alt="The author, David Abel, his wife, Jess, and their son, Wolf Leffler Abel." data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_460w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/25/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1100055.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_460w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/25/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1100055.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" /><br /><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The author, David Abel, his wife, Jess, and their son, Wolf Leffler Abel.</div></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The next day, as we wandered about the city, we discovered that wherever we went strangers who caught sight of our doughy cherub flocked to him. On the sky train, old women crowded around him. Street vendors leaned over him with a big grin until he returned their smiles. At parks, hotels, and restaurants, men and women of all ages wanted a piece of Wolfy. It was like traveling with a small deity. We began calling him Baby Buddha.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wolfy lapped up the attention, flashing his dimples, babbling, eyeing strangers with curiosity.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A few days later, I took a bus to Cambodia while Jess and Wolfy went to the beach with her family. It was a time for me to catch up on sleep and relive the glory of traveling solo. As I toured the temples of Angkor Wat, I was glad to be relieved of diaper duty, preparing bottles, and the constant comforting. I luxuriated in the freedom.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, there was a gnawing absence. With every child I passed, I longed to see my boy’s smile, craved his slobbery hug, and pined to parade him around.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When we reunited in Bangkok, I held him tightly and realized how much I had changed in the past few months, how much I had moved beyond my fears of fatherhood. He returned the joy with a milky spit-up.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A few days later, we loaded our bags with diapers, wipes,</div><div class="figure" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em -82.03125px 2em 24.1875px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 362.984375px;"><img alt="Five-month-old Wolf Leffler Abel was treated like a little deity during his travels through Asia earlier this year." data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_371w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/25/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1100191.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_371w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/25/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1100191.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" /><br /><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Five-month-old Wolf Leffler Abel was treated like a little deity during his travels through Asia earlier this year.</div></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">toys, and the many other necessities of traveling with an infant. We had tickets to Kuala Lumpur, but we learned at the airport that our early flight was canceled. Hours later, after airline agents, immigration officials, shopkeepers, and tourists took Wolfy’s picture, we caught a flight instead to Penang, a densely populated island off the northwest coast of Malaysia.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Over the next few days, waiters held Wolfy as we devoured roti canai, a cross between a pancake and crepe doused in a gravy-like curry. Passengers on buses made funny faces to get a rise out of him. From Little India to the region’s largest Buddhist temple, Wolfy was a model baby. He never took offense when people asked the same question: “boy or girl?”</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After walking much of the city, we flew north to Langkawi, an island near the border with Thailand, where we rented a car, a trying process as we struggled to find one with seat belts to secure our carseat. Over two days, we took Wolfy for a dip in the ocean, on hikes to waterfalls in the jungle, and past packs of monkeys, which eyed our boy like he might make a meal.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Afterward, we boarded a ferry for Thailand. Wolfy pursed his lips at the wind and found peace in the white noise of the loud engines, eventually snoozing in Jess’s arms. At the port, we boarded a pickup truck and sat in the cargo bay for a long 10-minute ride with me holding our squirming boy until we reached a bus station, where ticket agents each took a turn holding him and snapping pictures.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The trip from there was another long ride, this one for four hours. It began peacefully with Wolfy asleep, but when he awoke, trouble loomed. Jess nursed him and then he sucked down a bottle. He rattled and stared at his toys, and after those lost their allure, we sang. When the psychedelic iPhone app exhausted its magic, once again, Wolf howled.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We thought we were in the clear when we made it to Krabi, the resort town in southern Thailand, but things got worse. We couldn’t find a taxi, so we had to take another truck. The five-minute ride to our hotel turned into a 45-minute eternity, and Wolfy again had to ride in my arms, shrieking the entire way. I had reached a place beyond self-loathing, wondering whether we were torturing our baby, whether this would be our last trip together.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite the tension and exhaustion, we pressed on and spent the next few days island hopping on dragon boats with Jess’s family. Wolfy loved swimming naked in the shadows of the islands’ rocky peaks. He rolled around in the sand during our spicy picnics and fell asleep to the rumble of engines. He was becoming a hardy kid.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By the time we returned to Bangkok, I was run-down, fighting a fever as we filed through an airport for the 10th time in two weeks. Back in one of the world’s hottest cities, I was shivering. The taxi ride in felt like it lasted longer than the flight from Boston, as Wolfy whimpered and wailed, not the salve I wanted for my throbbing head.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I tried to keep my distance, but it was futile. A few days later, before dawn, Jess woke me up with fear in her eyes. “Wolfy has a fever,” she said. He was burning up and had a high-pitched cough that sounded like a mewling cat. I was in tears. I was to blame.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We called Jess’s sister-in-law, Nai, and within minutes we were heading to a nearby hospital. When we arrived at the pediatric unit, it looked like a first-rate US hospital, with high-tech equipment, doctors in white coats, and colorful, modern furniture. But there were mosquitos swarming through the ward, and I stood over Wolfy, swatting them as they hovered.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The staff ran tests, and within an hour, diagnosed him with the flu, which can be lethal at his age. They prescribed Tamiflu, and it was a rough few days, with Nai teaching us how to give the medicine orally. Each injection made him (and us) gag.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After days of misery, Wolfy regained his color, his smile, and importantly, his flair, so much so that whenever we passed through the hotel lobby, the clerks demanded, “Show us the dancing baby!” He complied with alacrity, high stepping into their hearts, his dimples projecting his pride.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A few days later, still groggy, we returned home on a redeye, and impressively, Wolfy slept for much of both flights. At home, it took a month for him to slough off his cough and readjust to his sleep schedule.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It took the same time for amnesia to set in, and for us to start planning our next trip.</div><div style="font-size: 1.6em; line-height: 1.625;"><tagline><em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel can be reached at&nbsp;<a class="a" href="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&amp;fs=1&amp;tf=1&amp;to=dabel@globe.com" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter&nbsp;<a class="a" href="http://twitter.com/davabel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">@davabel</a>.</em></tagline></div></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-73364988754306973762013-12-31T18:29:00.000-08:002015-01-19T18:42:29.571-08:00The Dreaded X<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.04347826;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Bump in the Road: The dreaded X, and the clock was ticking</span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><figure class="figure lead-figure full" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px 21.75px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 800.796875px;"><img alt=" " data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2015/01/13/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/new%20Passport%20Control1.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2015/01/13/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/new%20Passport%20Control1.jpg" itemprop="contentUrl" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><span class="author" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-right-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-right-style: solid; border-width: 0px 1px 0px 0px; color: black; display: inline; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 5px 0.25em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 5px 0px 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="author" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-right-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-right-style: solid; border-width: 0px 1px 0px 0px; color: black; display: inline; letter-spacing: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 5px 0.25em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 5px 0px 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline;">By<b>&nbsp;</b><span itemprop="name" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/staff/abel" rel="author" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;" title="More Stories by David Abel">David Abel</a><b>&nbsp; </b>|<b>&nbsp; </b>Globe Staff</span></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;<time datetime="2015-01-17 15:52" itemprop="datePublished" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">JANUARY 17, 2015</time><br /><span class="span" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span><span class="span" id="U8012939138613FH" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">M</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">IAMI — My mom has many virtues. Patience isn’t one of them.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She’s routinely punctual, so I wasn’t surprised when my flight from Mexico landed and I found a message from her on my phone. “We’re in the cellphone lot,” she wrote.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I texted back that we had checked our bags — a time-wasting extravagance often frowned on in my family — and reminded her it might take some time getting through customs.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But the pressure was on.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My wife, Jess, and I divvied up the tasks to get us out as quickly as possible. She would wait with our restless 2-year-old in the jetway for his stroller; I would lug our carry-on bags and race to customs to get a spot on line.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Miami International Airport is gargantuan and notoriously confusing. I wended my way through the long, marbled corridors, up and down the escalators, across moving sidewalks, and onto a skytrain.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The line I found, however, wasn’t what I had expected. Instead of the usual rows for functionaries to stamp passports, I found a bank of newfangled machines that looked like high-tech ATMs, but with scanners and cameras.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I called Jess. She was still waiting for the stroller.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I reached the front of the line at the “Automated Passport Control,” I followed the directions on the touchscreen and began answering questions such as whether I was carrying more than $10,000 in cash. (Sadly, I wasn’t.) I held my passport up to the scanner and smiled as the machine snapped a picture.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Was I traveling with family? Yes, I responded. The machine asked me to scan their passports; I complied. But then the machine asked to snap their photos too. I had to cancel the transaction.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I called Jess again. She was finally making her way over, carrying our son and pushing the stroller. Feeling the pressure, as my mom and her fiance were waiting for us after driving more than an hour, I thought I might expedite things by checking myself in first.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This was not a wise idea.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I went through the process of entering the information again, until I came to the question of whether I was traveling with family. I thought that if I had answered no, I could check myself in and then check them in when they had arrived.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But the next question gave me pause. Would I certify to the federal government that everything I had answered was true? Lying on an official document could probably be a crime, I thought. So I answered no, hoping that would again scrap the transaction. But it was too late.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I heard the sounds of the machine printing and found a small slip of paper. Ominously, it had a large X over my name, photo, and birthday. Did that mean I wasn’t going to be allowed back into the country? Was I now on some kind of watch list or considered a suspicious person? Was I heading to a secret room to be interrogated or strip searched?</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was not a warm welcome home.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Jess finally found me, I reentered our information, again, and hoped for a better outcome. She and my son received a clean slip from the machine, carte blanche to prance through customs. I received another form with the same large X. An airport official standing next to the machines informed me that I needed to see a passport agent.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Jess looked at me like I was an idiot.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The official pointed us to the customs hall. When I showed my form to another official, he ushered me to a zigzagging line that looked like it would be quicker to walk back to Boston. Hundreds of people — most of them from foreign countries or others with the same mark of Cain on their forms — were snaking tediously through the cordons. I was trapped. I felt like I was gasping for air.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The only thing worse would have been waiting in line with our antsy son. So Jess left me the useless stroller, which he refuses to sit in, and they went to find our checked bags. That meant she would have to carry him, his car seat, and two weighty bags.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She wasn’t happy.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nor was my mom. Despite the signs that said using cellphones was verboten, I stealthily sent her a text.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Line is ridiculously long,” I wrote.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She suggested I goad my son to start screaming. “I’m sure they’ll let you go through faster,” she wrote.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">About 15 minutes later, a customs official announced that all those bearing the dreaded X needed to fill out another form, which I lacked. I would have to start all over again.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I began to sweat.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A woman standing beside me came to my rescue: She had an extra form and even provided a pen.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">About a half-hour later, the line moving at a glacial pace, another customs official made an announcement. Were there any US citizens on line? I raised my hand — high. He waved me over, and like a guardian angel, escorted me to a much shorter line.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A few minutes later, a hand from behind a computer screen beckoned me to his counter.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The customs official looked at me with the warmth of a prison guard. Then he chastised me for not filling out my form neatly.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He saw that I had logged on to the machine multiple times, which he explained was a bad idea.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There was a long pause as he looked at his screen and then at me again. I wondered whether I was about to be sent to Guantanamo.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He looked at the empty stroller I was pushing and asked where the rest of my family was. I took a deep breath, wondering if that was some kind of trick question.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But he bought my explanation, which was the truth, and admonished me for my haste. Then he stamped my passport and pointed to the exit.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I finally found my family, they had installed the carseat and loaded up the car. Jess looked like she would have rathered I had been sent to Guantanamo. My mom gave me a big hug, as if she had barely waited.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“That wasn’t so bad,” she said.</span><br /><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at&nbsp;<a class="a" href="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&amp;fs=1&amp;tf=1&amp;to=dabel@globe.com" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background: transparent; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter&nbsp;<a class="a" href="http://twitter.com/davabel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background: transparent; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">@davabel</a>.</span></i></div></span></figure>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-67791407303495011392013-12-29T15:03:00.000-08:002014-01-02T15:18:58.088-08:00A lost temple in Cambodia<h4><a href="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1090710.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The ruins of Beng Mealea, a 900-year-old unpreserved temple is spread over several acres of jungle, is a series of so-called libraries, courtyards, and other chambers that surround a sanctuary." border="0" data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1090710.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1090710.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" /></a><br /></h4><br /><br /><nav class="cats-first" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #464646; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></nav><br /><div class="figure lead-figure full" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: both; color: #464646; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The ruins of Beng Mealea, a 900-year-old unpreserved temple is spread over several acres of jungle, is a series of so-called libraries, courtyards, and other chambers that surround a sanctuary.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; line-height: normal;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; line-height: normal;">By&nbsp;</span><cite style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; line-height: normal; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/staff/abel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #444444; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</cite><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Arial; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.3; text-transform: uppercase;">|&nbsp; GLOBE STAFF&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Arial; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.3; text-transform: uppercase;">&nbsp;| &nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Arial; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: normal; text-transform: uppercase;">SEPTEMBER 14, 2013</span></div></div></div><div class="article-body" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>SIEM REAP, Cambodia</b> — The road to the distant outpost of the ancient kingdom was said to be impassable, a winding route either engulfed by the jungle or flooded from tropical downpours.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It took some negotiation and several rickshaw drivers before I found someone willing to make the hourlong trek from Siem Reap to Beng Mealea, which means lotus pond in Khmer. I wanted to visit the remote, 900-year-old temple along the remains of the old royal highway to see what had become of a shrine devoured by time.</div><div class="figure" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em -82.03125px 2em 24.1875px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 362.984375px;"><img alt="Beng Mealea is a precursor to the temples throughout the Angkor Wat complex." data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_460w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1090734.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_460w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1090734.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" /><br /><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beng Mealea is a precursor to the temples throughout the Angkor Wat complex.</div></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When the driver picked me up at my hotel on the outskirts of Angkor Wat I kicked off my shoes, leaned back beneath the open canopy of his motorized rickshaw, and watched as the traffic of the increasingly crowded and polluted city of Siem Reap gave way to a lonely road.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">While rutted and at times blocked by oxcarts or cattle, the road was far better than advertised. It was paved, for the most part, and had once again become an avenue of commerce, where men strapped live pigs on the back of motorcycles, farmers hauled sacks of rice piled high on their tractors, and loggers loaded up rickety trucks with mounds of tree trunks and branches.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The smooth trip ended in a small village built for visitors, where my driver pointed in the direction of a trail off the road that led into a bower. Under an intense sun, I followed the path across a timeworn bridge and over a lotus pond, until I reached the remains of the royal road and its balustrades bearing stone serpents.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the distance, in the shadow of towering banyan trees, I caught a glimpse of the grandeur of what was once the entrance of the old temple and is now a heap of stones that loosely sustain the architecture of the era. A precursor to the temples throughout the Angkor Wat complex, Beng Mealea spreads over several acres of jungle, with a series of so-called libraries, courtyards, and other chambers that surround a sanctuary, much of which are covered in carvings from Hindu and Buddhist mythology.</div><div class="figure" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em -82.03125px 2em 24.1875px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 362.984375px;"><img alt="The ruins have carvings from Hindu and Buddhist mythology." data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_371w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Lifestyle/Images/P1090733.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_371w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Lifestyle/Images/P1090733.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" /><br /><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ruins have carvings from Hindu and Buddhist mythology.</div></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unlike Angkor Wat, the remains here have been neither renovated nor preserved. As a result, most of the buildings have been reduced to large piles of moss-covered stones, with trees and ferns rising through the yawning crevices where the foundation once stood. The columns have been reduced to rubble, and the entire area is a danger zone of sharp edges and knotty roots twisting over the stone.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are no signs explaining why the temple remains in such decrepitude, but there are many guides eager to offer their explanations and provide private tours.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Come with me,” waved an old man with a sunburned face and an official-looking badge.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I followed him from the top of a platform of weathered stones, where we looked at where a roof would have enclosed an inner chamber, and down a perilous path, using my hands to climb carefully over the massive stones. He pointed to roots that tunneled into the sandstone and showed me where not to step, where boulders were cracking under the weight of time.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He spoke next to no English, and I couldn’t speak Khmer. But as he escorted me from one chamber to the next, up and down and across the stones, I recognized some of the Hindu and Buddhist iconography I had seen in the temples of Angkor Wat: the so-called Churning of the Sea of Milk and the Hindu deity Vishnu being carried by a bird god; balustrades decorated with a seven-headed serpent; and the celestial nymphs called asparas, with their lotus earrings, elongated ear lobes, and flowing, once jewel-encrusted hair topped by tiaras.</div><div class="figure" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em -82.03125px 2em 24.1875px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 362.984375px;"><img alt="Beng Mealea is a picture of what happens when nature is allowed to take its course, even if the jungle has been beaten back in recent years. " data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_371w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1090729.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_371w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/06/26/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/P1090729.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" /><br /><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beng Mealea is a picture of what happens when nature is allowed to take its course, even if the jungle has been beaten back in recent years.</div></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My guide, who managed to navigate the temple barefoot, left me to ponder the ruins at the top of an enclosure, the principal sanctuary of the complex. Vestiges of the ornate, finely sculpted columns still line the walls, but at the center are piles of stones, mud, and banyan trees, which rise high into the sky like sculptures, their roots vining through the stones into the ground.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was a picture of what happens when nature is allowed to take its course, even if the jungle has been beaten back in recent years to accommodate a growing number of tourists scouring the lost temple.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After a few hours wandering around, several children playing on the stones urged me to follow them and led me even deeper into the complex, through courtyards shaded completely by the thick foliage, subterranean chambers suffused by scattered light, and atop perches adorned with lotus flowers.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They pointed to an area where a minefield from the Cambodian civil war had been cleared and then gestured in a separate direction to the path back to the village, where I had left my rickshaw driver.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I walked back, keeping a close eye on the ground, until I found the main path. It was early in the afternoon, and with the sun beating down, I spent a hot while searching for my driver. Eventually, he found me as I stood on the side of the road, sweat stinging my eyes. I hopped on the rickshaw and basked in the much-needed breeze. We stopped a few minutes later at a gas station, which was a woman with a rack of clear glass bottles filled with gasoline. She poured the amber liquid into the tank, and after he handed over a few riels, we were again cruising down the new road.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Back in Siem Reap, which had been wracked by violence during the Vietnam War, there were new kinds of temples rising all around — boutique hotels, chichi restaurants, well-stocked markets, all monuments to a new era of prosperity in Cambodia.</div><tagline><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel can be reached at&nbsp;<a class="a" href="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&amp;fs=1&amp;tf=1&amp;to=dabel@globe.com" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter&nbsp;<a class="a" href="http://twitter.com/davabel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">@davabel</a>.</em></tagline></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-22133385656240944852013-12-25T17:36:00.000-08:002014-02-02T17:49:23.269-08:00A Conflicted Surrender<div class="figure lead-figure full" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: both; color: #464646; font-size: 10px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="The Celebrity Constellation." data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/01/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/IMG_4771.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/01/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/IMG_4771.jpg" height="479" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" width="640" /><br /><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="credit" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0.05em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">DAVID ABEL/GLOBE STAFF</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Celebrity Constellation.</span></div></div></div><ul class="tools primary-tools" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #464646; float: left; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: left; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="top icon ico-print" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-image: url(http://c.o0bg.com/rw/SysConfig/WebPortal/BostonGlobe/Framework/images/icon-types-all.png); background-position: 0px -224px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #444444; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0.95em 1em 0px 20px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">PRINT</span></a></li><li style="background-color: transparent; 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border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had been wary of a vacation packed on a bobbing vessel with more than 2,000 people idling in long lines at the buffet or lounging beside overchlorinated pools. I was also acquainted with the frequency of norovirus outbreaks aboard cruise ships, which I had long viewed as cauldrons of communicable diseases.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But there we were, standing in a crowd on an exterior deck of the Celebrity Constellation, a behemoth of a vessel 965 feet long and 13 stories tall, complete with a basketball court, solarium, and Persian garden. When the foghorn signaled our departure for Cozumel, Mexico, I felt something of a white flag rise from within me, a conflicted surrender to package tourism and my new reality as a parent.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What lured my family aboard was a remark I once heard about how a cruise is like a floating hotel, with ocean views and lots of (hopefully edible) food. It was traveling without having to heave bags around. With a 16-month-old son and more than we wanted to carry, that sounded enticing.</div><div class="ad aside" data-adname-complete="true" data-adname="CENTRAL" id="ad_bigbox1" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; clear: both; display: inline; float: right; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em -81px 1.5em 39px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 311px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_/61381659/bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel_0__container__" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0pt none; list-style: none; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 310px; min-height: 265px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/61381659/bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel_0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/61381659/bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel_0" scrolling="no" style="background-color: transparent; border-width: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 310px; min-height: 265px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="300"></iframe></div></div><div id="skip-target" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Later in the day, J. C., the cruise director, stoked my hopes of a stress-free voyage when he urged us to abandon our anxieties and routines. “As long as you’re with us, you won’t have to cook a meal, clean up after yourself, or wash any dishes,” he said. “Sit back and relax.”</div><div class="figure" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; clear: right; float: right; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0.5em -81px 2em 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 362px;"><img alt="The author, his wife, Jess, their son, Wolfy." data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_460w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/01/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/IMG_4679.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_460w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/01/14/BostonGlobe.com/Travel/Images/IMG_4679.jpg" height="320" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" width="320" /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-size: 10px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; line-height: 1.58333333; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase;">DAVID ABEL</span><br /><div class="figcaption" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.58333333; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The author, his wife, Jess, and their son, Wolfy.</div></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My wife, Jess, and I longed to let someone else steer the ship of our lives for a few days. With last-minute tickets at a reasonable price, we were just happy to have left the tundra of Boston behind and lap up the warm breezes. J. C.’s words were a balm.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As for our son, Wolfy, he would soon become the celebrity of the cruise.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shortly after boarding, we were told to report to our muster station, the ship’s grand theater, where we would gather in the event of an emergency. As we waited for instructions, Wolfy became restless. He began running up and down the aisle, attracting attention as he spun around and plopped on the plush carpeting.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He seemed to be thriving on the attention. So I gave him a boost onto the stage, where he began to blush and spin some more. When the audience of several hundred people began to applaud, Wolfy clapped, too, sparking an even more rousing response.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wolfy kept at it over the next few days, hopping around in a Zumba class, helping bang out a rhythm with a Latin drummer, and performing a solo interpretive dance for a trio playing classical music. He also had plenty of room to run wherever he wanted, with a forgiving crew of nearly 1,000 to help us keep an eye on him.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">More than anything, perhaps, Wolfy was excited by our room, a snug nook of 170 square feet. For him it was like a funhouse, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, a cushy bed to roll around on, and plenty of drawers and other things to ransack, including the minibar. It also meant easy access to us when he awoke in the middle of the night.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There were limits to the bliss.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Our picky eater was less than impressed by the offerings in the main dining room, a carpeted cavern of faux opulence with a highly orchestrated ensemble of waiters in formal wear, offering everything from jerk chicken to a 1998 cabernet sauvignon for $3,950. Their patience and graciousness were enviable, as Wolfy tossed most of what they provided on the well-vacuumed floor.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The plentiful buffet on a deck above, with everything from omelet stations to sushi bars, was even less appetizing, with sauceless pizza bathed in grease, tasteless fruit that seemed just out of the freezer, and ice cream that had the flavor and consistency of Pepto-Bismol, which both Jess and I would eventually need.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And then there was the minor issue of the engine on the ship malfunctioning, marooning us on a stopover in Key West. The captain decided to abandon our excursion to Mexico; instead, we made a shorter jaunt to the Bahamas. He made it up to the passengers with a few hours of free booze and a gala barbecue by the pool, which would have been great had we not been enduring indigestion.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The destination, however, was irrelevant to us. We were just happy to absorb the trade winds from the balcony of our room and watch the waves go by. I got to take our boy for a dip in the ocean in Key West. We saw some shows at the theater, which ranged from impressive to earnest. They even left us chocolates during the turndown service, which we kept for when we could eat again.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After six days at sea, we arrived around dawn back in Fort Lauderdale. As we lined up to disembark, Wolfy remained enthusiastic to the end, running around, waving to his many new friends.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The truth was, for me and Jess, as much as we wanted to hate it, we could have spent a few more days aboard, especially with our recovering appetites.</div><tagline><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel can be reached at&nbsp;<a class="a" href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter&nbsp;<a class="a" href="http://twitter.com/davabel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">@davabel</a>.</em></tagline></span></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-57310366431559760562013-11-02T19:52:00.000-07:002014-01-17T13:08:31.894-08:00A long flight home<div class="header" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #464646; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="The young airline traveler and flight attendants" data-fullsrc="//c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/01/06/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/photo-4.jpg" src="http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/01/06/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/photo-4.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; 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background-color: transparent; background-image: url(http://c.o0bg.com/rw/SysConfig/WebPortal/BostonGlobe/Framework/images/icon-types-all.png); background-position: 10px -1608px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(219, 219, 219); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #444444; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0.7em 0.7em 0.7em 30px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">By&nbsp;<cite style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-style: normal; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"></cite></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/staff/abel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #444444; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.3;">|&nbsp; GLOBE STA</span></h2><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #999999; display: inline; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.04347826; list-style: none; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">JANUARY 06, 2014</div></li></ul></li></ul><div class="article-body" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.6em; line-height: 1.625; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 12px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;Jan. 6, 2014</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.625;">As we circled Logan International Airport this morning in a thick fog, the flutter of turbulence compelling us to fasten our seatbelts, it seemed to be taking a little longer to land than we had expected.</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Our 17-month-old son was growing antsy.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then the pilot of our JetBlue flight from West Palm Beach came over the intercom and told us he had waited as long as he could. After about a half-hour over Boston, with visibility limited and strong winds, he had to find another place to land.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We’re heading to Atlantic City,” he told us, explaining there was no space in Hartford or Providence.</div><div id="skip-target" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We were among the thousands stranded over the past few days as flights across the country were canceled due to last week’s storm. We were not complaining, especially as the weather in Florida was sunny and in the 70s, while the weather at home was, well, colder.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But after waking at 5 a.m. today for a new flight, and with our son now howling, we were ready to get home.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The half-hour flight to Atlantic City was lengthened as we circled for a prolonged period there as well. We were caught in the cascade of delays that ripples through the system with bad weather.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mercifully, Wolfy, our son, had fallen asleep, after overdosing on Llama Llama books and iPhone apps.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When we landed, the woman sitting beside me shared an e-mail her husband, a pilot, sent to her. It had a picture of our flight path, which zigzagged and looked like a trip inspired by hallucinogens.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She said she had already rented a car and planned to drive home, thinking it would be hours or longer before we got out. “It’s a bad sign if they tell us to get off the plane,” she said.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A few minutes later, a flight attendant came on the intercom and asked us all to deplane. He had no idea when we would be able to get back on.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wolfy, now wide awake and eager to move, would make us the last of the passengers to get off. He preferred to roam around the plane, looking for fun things to grab that people had left behind.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When we finally ushered him off, there were firefighters and police at the gate. I thought they might be there to calm panicked, frustrated passengers.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It turned out a fuse had blown on the braking system of our plane when we landed, shooting sparks from the bottom of the craft, a New Jersey state trooper told me.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A rental car began to seem appealing.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As we waited at the gate, our son befriended several dogs that were stranded with us. He showed off his new acrobatic skills, climbing on seats and anything else that seemed inviting.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Within an hour, as we struggled to entertain him, we were called back to the plane.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wolfy wasn’t happy to be back, especially as it took quite some time to get off the ground. But he now had friends onboard, including the same flight attendants, who plied him with animal crackers, perhaps the first time he had ever eaten cookies.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was a quick flight back. As we descended into the fog and felt the strong winds again, we did not rue all the snow on the ground or the barren landscape, compared to the tropical climes we had left.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.125em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We were just happy to be home.</div><tagline><em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">David Abel can be reached at&nbsp;<a class="a" href="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&amp;fs=1&amp;tf=1&amp;to=dabel@globe.com" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter&nbsp;<a class="a" href="http://twitter.com/davabel" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; background-color: transparent; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s linear, background-color 0.1s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">@davabel</a>.</em></tagline></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-12030332639354608902012-01-19T18:15:00.000-08:002014-01-19T18:22:06.180-08:00Bats, Blue Jewel in Guatemala<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2tISY42opHg/UtyGofBLOcI/AAAAAAAAeHA/6RtCMbxZLlk/s1600/IMG_0004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2tISY42opHg/UtyGofBLOcI/AAAAAAAAeHA/6RtCMbxZLlk/s1600/IMG_0004.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: center;">April 29, 2012</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>SEMUC CHAMPEY, Guatemala --</b>&nbsp;Before we arrived at one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and among the most difficult to get to, there was nearly a mutiny on the 15-hour ride as the driver of our packed minivan sped down the dark, curving mountain roads.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our long journey into the jungle began in a small town on the coast of the volcano-ringed Lake Atitlan and took us from the old colonial capital of Antigua to the sprawling modern capital of Guatemala City. From there, the roads narrowed and turned from pavement to dirt to a path that seemed to have been cleared by machete.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Around midnight, after the driver had agreed to slow down and our fellow passengers mellowed out, we stopped in the mountain village of Lanquín, where the stars provided more light than the few signs of human habitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A waiting pickup truck took us on the last and hardest hour of the trip, wheezing up a winding, nearly vertical slope that only approximated my idea of a road. Because Jess, my wife, was pregnant, we squeezed into the cab while other tourists bounced around in the back with all of our backpacks.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we finally arrived at our hut in Semuc Champey, we had to use the light from our cellphones to find our way because the electricity had been shut down. At that moment, it was difficult to appreciate why we had come so far.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But when the humid breezes of morning filtered through the thin walls of our hut, we awoke to brightly colored butterflies, orchids and other exotic flowers, and got our first glimpse of the turquoise glory of Río Cahabón.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we watched the river glow in the morning light, we gobbled a breakfast of pancakes, then followed our guide, who called himself Toto, to the foot of a hill, where we climbed a succession of ladders and hiked up steep paths until we reached a clearing in the vegetation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was there we realized why we had come so far.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From a lookout point, we saw the vast panorama of green, with the bright blue river cutting through the canopy of trees in a series of stepped waterfalls and natural pools. It seemed to beckon us, and we followed Toto down another path to see why the area is called Semuc Champey, which in the Mayan language of Q'eqchi means "the sacred water that hides beneath the rocks."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We followed the path of the underground river toward the shallow pools, where we slid down rocks from one into another, luxuriating in the clear water until we came to a 36-foot ledge over which Toto promptly disappeared. We were not sure he had survived until he bounded up the rocks and began urging us to jump.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because it seemed easier to jump than hike down, while Jess waited there, I followed others in our group and took the plunge, a long, stomach-churning freefall that ended in the confluence of multiple waterfalls.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back with the group, we spent the next few hours sloshing around in the water, tubing, and soaking up the beauty. As dusk neared, we followed another guide down another trail to the mouth of a large cave, where we were each issued a candle.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One by one, we entered the darkness, quickly finding ourselves in brisk, ankle-deep water that became knee deep and then waist deep, until we had to figure out how to swim while keeping the dripping candles from extinguishing. We followed our guide up and down ladders, from one pool of water to the next, using our candles to avoid the sharp stalactites and stalagmites.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At one point, we followed the guide up a gushing waterfall, which we climbed by using a rope and tucking our candles in our bathing suits. Some in our group jumped off small ledges into the dark water.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As our candles burned to our fingers, we arrived at the final, most terrifying part of the journey, as we watched the guide, once again, vanish. He disappeared in the fading light through a small hole in the rocks, which seemed no wider than his skinny body.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I tried to follow him down what appeared to be a chute, I couldn't figure out how he did it without hitting his head on the surrounding rocks. It didn't seem possible, until someone else in our group squeezed through and jumped.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Jess and I weren't sure we would make it. We had no idea whether those who went before us survived. But with little light left and no way to turn back, we put aside our better judgment, twisted our bodies into what seemed like the safest possible position, and let go.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The drop was about 10 feet into a deep pool of water, and our guide was there to catch us as we resurfaced. With wobbly legs and our hearts in our mouths, we found our way back to the outside.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning, on the pickup truck back, we squeezed in with about 20 others, and all of our backpacks. It was raining and we huddled for warmth while the truck heaved and sputtered down the steep path back to Lanquín.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It would be another daylong trip to our next destination, on similarly challenging roads, and while we were exhausted, we were exhilarated, too, after touching the splendors of a hidden jewel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel</i></span></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-80749299883978779602011-11-19T10:43:00.000-08:002014-01-17T12:37:02.291-08:00Sailing though the Galapagos with Mom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pB_LupLb-Pw/UsTtFLnfqSI/AAAAAAAAUf8/whzQMD6N540/s1600/P1060019.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pB_LupLb-Pw/UsTtFLnfqSI/AAAAAAAAUf8/whzQMD6N540/s640/P1060019.JPG" height="458" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pB_LupLb-Pw/UsTtFLnfqSI/AAAAAAAAUf8/whzQMD6N540/s1600/P1060019.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Click here for more pictures of <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/117528831952772399065/TheGalapagos?noredirect=1">The Galapagos</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /> <span style="color: #222222;">By David Abel &nbsp;| Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;11/13/2011<o:p></o:p></span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="color: #222222;">GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador --</span></b><span style="color: #222222;"> With her nails perfectly manicured, lips freshly painted, diamonds on her ears and neck, and with an appetite for nature limited to the golf course, my mom gingerly followed the trail from one lava rock to the next, sidestepping hundreds of marine iguanas snorting saltwater, finches pecking at the bloody placenta of a sea lion, and a covey of blue-footed boobies nuzzling with their spear-shaped beaks.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">None seemed the slightest bit perturbed by our presence as we meandered past, my mom sweating in unnecessary layers of rain gear on this sunny morning and me wondering how she agreed to join me on this journey to the Galápagos, what remain among the world’s most remote islands.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘I’m not much for mountain climbing,’’ she said as she ambled up a gentle slope, holding her wide-brimmed, lemon-colored hat as it flopped in the breeze.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">When I reminded her that the island was basically flat, she smiled and said, ‘‘Well, I’m not much for rock climbing, either.’’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">There are more forbidding places to take your mom than on a cruise through the Galápagos Islands, the famous archipelago 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, where Charles Darwin honed his ideas about evolution and I began to wonder how many of my mother’s traits I had inherited and whether I had benefited from natural selection.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">The idea of a trip with my mom, Syd Abel, which I worried might be an exercise in masochism, began when she asked if I would help with the family flower business after my father died last winter and she turned 65. She wanted me to meet some of the growers in&nbsp;Quito, and I suggested we take the opportunity to do some mother-son bonding in the Galápagos.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">I took the lead in finding the right boat to ferry us though the chain of more than 20 islands and islets, which are spread across nearly 17,000 square miles of turquoise waters along the equator. The options included budget boats with multi-bunk rooms and cold showers, so-called tourist-class boats with more amenities, and a range of luxury cruises.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">I might have leaned toward the budget cruises had I been doing it on my own, although no excursion through the Galápagos could be described as cheap. (Tourists have to pay $100 just to leave the airport.) When I found two options that seemed to offer a mix of comfort and adventure, I e-mailed the links to my mom for her to choose.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘I’m afraid none of the above,’’ she replied.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">After some prodding, we agreed on a 16-passenger boat called, pleasingly enough,&nbsp;Eden, which promised hot showers, an experienced guide, and freshly cooked meals. About a week before leaving, we transferred more than $2,000 to a travel agent I found online, which included a round-trip flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, to a small island in the Galápagos called Baltra.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">When we arrived in late September, a time when the flow of tourists starts to dwindle and waves in the Pacific swell, we descended onto a parched landscape formed some 3 million years ago during a series of volcanic eruptions that left a scree of lava rock and little that could grow besides cacti.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">After paying the entrance fee and passing a scrum of tourists, we found a man holding a sign with our names, dispelling our concerns that we had fallen for an Internet scam. We followed him to a bus, where we joined dozens of others for a short ride to a water taxi to&nbsp;Santa Cruz, the second largest island in the Galápagos. The man then drove us across the island, an hourlong ride through deserts and rainforests, to one of the archipelago’s few inhabited areas, a growing seaside town of about 18,000 residents called Puerto Ayora.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">Crew members were waiting for us in a dinghy and took us across a harbor crowded with tour boats, allowing us a glimpse of everything from the unpainted, listing hulls of budget vessels to yachts that looked like schooners. When we spotted the&nbsp;Eden, a sturdy ship with spacious decks and newly painted in white, my mom exhaled with relief.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">There were large frigate birds — with their iridescent black feathers, red throat pouches, and long, forked tails — hovering above, a school of puffer fish visible in the clear water, and a pair of sea lions lounging on the stern.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘This is going to be exciting,’’ Mom said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">The young captain helped us aboard and showed us to our below-deck cabin, which had a private bathroom, chocolates, and fancily folded towels on our small beds, and ample room to store our bags. It seemed comfortable, but it would be close quarters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">My mom didn’t appear impressed, and she flashed me a look that suggested I was asking her to spend the next four days in a prison cell. But then she surprised me. ‘‘It’s clean, and it’s nice,’’ she said. ‘‘No complaints.’’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">The staff served us a freshly prepared lunch, the first of a series of finely wrought meals, and then we joined other passengers for a rainy hike to see the lava tubes and giant tortoises of&nbsp;Santa Cruz.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘Well, this is adventurous,’’ my mom repeated several times, as her white sneakers became slathered in mud and her blown hair turned curly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">We passed dozens of tortoises, some chomping on grass and others seemingly asleep, their heads retracted in their shells. Our guide, Ruben Montalvo, said many appeared to be more than a century old.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">As we descended into a cave carved from lava, Mom reminded me that hikes weren’t her thing. ‘‘I like golf,’’ she said. ‘‘But I can roll with the punches.’’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">That night, the crew passed around pills to prevent seasickness before we left for Floreana, the archipelago’s sixth largest island, known for its flamingo lagoons. My mom decided to take a sleeping pill instead, but that was no match for the hours of heaving as we crossed the choppy sea.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">She was wide awake when my alarm rang at dawn for our first swim. The crew provided wetsuits and snorkeling gear, and Montalvo took us in a dinghy to a cove teeming with sea lions, giant turtles, and other large creatures. As we slipped into the cold water — Mom decided to stay on the boat — several sea lions began to swim alongside us, performing somersaults and other graceful acrobatics, and the turtles floated around as if in slow motion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">We spent the rest of the day exploring a water-filled cave — Mom declined to descend into the darkness — snorkeling with tropical fish, and watching blue-footed boobies dive into the surf like missiles, spearing prey with their beaks. At one point, my mom suited up in a wetsuit with the rest of us. She followed us into the water, tentatively. But it was a tad colder than she would have liked, and it had been a long time since she had breathed through a tube in her mouth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">The effort lasted only a few minutes, though she insisted it was much longer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">The next day, after another all-night voyage on bumpy seas, we awoke to views of the rocky beaches of&nbsp;Española&nbsp;Island, the most southerly spit of land in the chain. The crew dropped us on a landing where hundreds of marine iguanas seemed to be in a collective coma, lounging inertly on the warmth of black boulders, their long tails offering the only signs of life. Few took notice as we stepped over them on our way to the beach.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">Our path, however, was blocked by a troop of sea lions, a much sprightlier species. They had such little fear of us that they insisted on crossing the narrow trail at the same time we did, forcing us to make way by standing in bushes. On the nearby white sands, we found wide-eyed, playful sea lion pups nursing, crimson-colored crabs basking in the mist of the sea spray, and seemingly every kind of bird, from yellow warblers hopping about to mottled hawks sharpening their lethal talons.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">Farther inland we came across a colony of albatross, their furry hatchlings camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding rocks. In pairs, the adults nestled in a field, primping each other before shuffling off to a prominent cliff, spreading their enormous wings, and gliding into the misty wind. Nearby, we came across a colony of masked boobies guarding eggs and blue-footed boobies marching about in their comical courtship dance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘A lot of nature, for sure,’’ Mom said, approvingly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘They’re beautiful — very graceful,’’ she said of the birds. She wasn’t as much of a fan of the iguanas. ‘‘Very ugly, and smelly,’’ she said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Later that morning, the crew took us to a place called Shark’s Rock, where I had envisioned the possibility of offering my mom as bait, if things didn’t work out. Again, she chose not to join me and the others snorkeling.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘Not my cup of tea,’’ she said of swimming with the white-tipped reef sharks that inhabit the area. ‘‘I just don’t fancy sharks. That’s your thing, but thanks anyway.’’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">After an hour of swimming that included a close encounter with one large, toothy predator, which seemed more interested in the shade of a small cave than dining on tourists, we emerged to freshly baked cookies and other pastries aboard theEden.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">There, Montalvo, 37, a trained naturalist who has been leading tours for more than a decade, explained how the islands are changing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">He said the water is now warmer in the winters, offering fewer nutrients to the abundant marine life, and breeding patterns from sea lions to boobies seem to be changing. He said many colonies of birds appeared to be significantly smaller than when he began visiting the islands as a child, which he attributed to dwindling food supplies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘It’s a combination of climate change and the increasing human presence,’’ he said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">This year, about 175,000 tourists will visit the Galápagos, more than four times the number in 1990, according to the United Nations, and some of those inevitably make poor decisions. Montalvo said he has seen tourists try to pet the wildlife. While they seem tame and exhibit little fear of humans, they know how to protect themselves. Montalvo said he has seen sea lions bite hapless tourists who pad on their turf and boobies strike those who have come too close.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘The more this happens, I worry, the more their behavior will change,’’ he said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">A few hours after we reached the final island of the trip,&nbsp;San Cristóbal, where we circled a stark rock formation off the coast and watched pelicans prowl for breakfast, the crew brought us to land and took us to the airport.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">We exchanged hugs, and my mom looked content, a beatific smile banishing any remnant of anxiety.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘Well, it’s been quite an adventure,’’ she said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As our plane took off, she held my hand in hers, which she began to stare at with alarm.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">‘‘I need a manicure,’’ she said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b><b><i><span style="color: #1155cc;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_S_00879_b_author">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.</a></span></i></b><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></b><b><u><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_L_00996_webheadline"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_O_00995_1_0"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_P_00997__Fit"></a>If you go:&nbsp;Galapagos Islands</u></b><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_L_00999_body"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_O_00998_1_0"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_P_01000__Fit"></a><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">There are&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_T_01003_b_boldpoynter"><b><span style="color: #1155cc;">no direct flights&nbsp;</span></b></a><span style="color: #222222;">from abroad to the Galapagos. American, Continental, LAN, and other major airlines fly from&nbsp;Boston&nbsp;to&nbsp;Quito&nbsp;for between $700 and $1,200, depending on the season. There are also direct flights to&nbsp;Guayaquil, which is closer to the Galapagos and less expensive than flying from&nbsp;Quito. LAN, TAME, and AeroGal offer flights connecting to the Galapagos from both cities, for $350 to $500.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">There are&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_T_01004_b_boldpoynter"><b><span style="color: #1155cc;">hotels</span></b></a><span style="color: #222222;">&nbsp;in Puerto Ayora on&nbsp;Santa Cruz, and it’s possible to book day trips from there to the other islands. But most tourists take 4- to 8-day cruises, which range from budget boats with multi-bunk rooms and cold showers, tourist-class boats with more amenities, and a range of first-class and luxury cruises.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b><b><span style="color: #1155cc;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_T_01005_b_boldpoynter">The</a></span></b><b><span style="color: #1155cc;"> </span></b><b><span style="color: #222222;">Eden</span></b><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.galapagoscruise.com.ec/eden-yacht" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">www.galapagoscruise.com.ec/eden-yacht</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rates per person for this 16-passenger boat range from $700 for a four-day cruise to $2,800 for eight days, depending on the time of year and how far in advance you book. Last-minute deals purchased a few weeks before departure can be considerably less expensive. Deals are also available by booking in Puerto Ayora.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">Sites to search for&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12884724" name="133608fc41047100_T_01006_b_boldpoynter"><b><span style="color: #1155cc;">cruise options</span></b></a><span style="color: #222222;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.galapagos.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">http://www.galapagos.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.galapagosisland.net/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">http://www.galapagosisland.net</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.galapagos-inc.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">http://www.galapagos-inc.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.galapagosislands.com/galapagos-cruise.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">http://www.galapagosislands.com/galapagos-cruise.html</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #1155cc;"><a href="http://www.galapagosonline.com/Cruises/Galapagos_Cruises.html" target="_blank">http://www.galapagosonline.com/Cruises/Galapagos_Cruises.html</a></span></span></span></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-81490994601125565712011-05-05T09:27:00.001-07:002014-01-17T12:40:08.844-08:00Egypt: Before the Revolt<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wzg77IPpjA0/UsTqUzsgzFI/AAAAAAAAUfw/f_K6z-qgnv0/s1600/P1030512.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wzg77IPpjA0/UsTqUzsgzFI/AAAAAAAAUfw/f_K6z-qgnv0/s640/P1030512.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; text-align: start;">Click here for more pictures of <u><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/117528831952772399065/Egypt?noredirect=1">Egypt</a></u></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; text-align: start;">.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff &nbsp;| 4/15/2011</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>CAIRO </b>— In historical terms, it was eons before Tahrir Square became a symbol of liberty.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A month before a popular revolt here swept out decades of authoritarian rule, when the only sign of dissent we encountered was grumbling about a system impervious to change, a clean-shaven young man with a bright smile would not allow me to politely decline what seemed a kind offer.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“You are my brother,’’ he had said with affable persistence a few hours earlier over the phone, though he had never heard of me before that moment. “Get your bags together. You’re staying with me. I have a flat ready for you.’’</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My wife, Jessica Leffler, and I had reached Ahmed Adel, a friend of a friend of a friend, shortly after our dawn arrival in the center of what was then a different kind of chaos, when the first tinny call to prayer rings from minaret to minaret, as if trying to muffle the less pious bleating of taxi horns and police whistles. We had agreed to meet at a cafe just off Tahrir Square — an otherwise obscure intersection in the middle of the city — where we had hoped he would help us arrange a tour of the pyramids.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The meeting would be our first lesson in the difficulty of deciphering intentions, calculating risks, and calibrating how to haggle during a 10-day trip through Egypt.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we met Adel at the cafe and invited him to sit for a drink, he told us he had a car waiting and insisted we come to his house, where he said his mother was preparing dinner. More than an hour later, we arrived at his concrete building in a village with dirt roads, heaps of burning trash, and lots of stray animals — well south of Cairo.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“This is where you’re staying,’’ he insisted as he brought us a plate of fruit and rice-stuffed cabbage leaves in a spare, drafty room lighted by one fluorescent bulb.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the evening wore on, Adel put me on the phone with his cousin to discuss our pyramid tour. The cousin had a package that went well beyond what we wanted — for nearly $1,000 a person. It was at that point — a moment similar to what we would experience repeatedly as we ventured across Egypt without the convenience of a package tour — that we insisted it was time to go.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, for nearly every encounter fraught with dubious motives, we experienced random acts of kindness, such as when we came back to our hotel that night and the owner, Mohamed El-Naggar, greeted us with a tray of cakes and candles for my birthday. “You are welcome,’’ he said, repeating a mantra we heard frequently.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the least, as we parried touts hawking everything from spices to camel rides and police pushing illicit tours of ancient temples for a small payment, we honed our negotiating skills. That helped as we made our way from the traffic-choked maze of Cairo to the vast emptiness of the western deserts to the southern cataracts of the Nile River and ultimately to the Sinai Peninsula.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But first we had to learn how to cross the street in Cairo, where there are next to no stoplights and the traffic police hold little sway against the crush of diesel-chuffing vehicles. The key, we were told, was using the residents as human shields and following them as they waded through the traffic.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With that knowledge, we made it to the city’s important sites: the Egyptian Museum, which features mummies and relics of King Tut’s tomb; the towering mosques of the Islamic section; and the Khan al-Khalili bazaar, where we devoured our first tahini-drizzled falafel, downed fresh-squeezed juices, and browsed for baubles. We also visited less frequented sites, including the Art Nouveau-styled Chaar-Hachamaim synagogue, one of the few remaining Jewish temples in the Arab world, and Al-Azhar Park, a strangely pristine oasis of gardens and fountains that provided an especially peaceful perch at sunset, when the city’s pollution gilds the dusk in a fiery haze.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We devoted a day to exploring the pyramids of Giza, Saqqara, and Dahshur, where with throngs we gawked in awe at the precise lines of the massive crypts, some of which have defied the harsh sun and pummeling winds for more than 4,000 years. We also marveled at their proximity to the city and the surrounding squalor.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Afterward, we took a six-hour bus ride to Bahariyya, a small town built around an oasis in the Sahara, where we joined an overnight jeep tour of the Black and White deserts. Our guide, Hamad Hamdy, drove more than 100 miles per hour down a desolate road, past black, volcano-shaped hills, to the Dalíesque spires of the White Desert. We spent the night sleeping on the cold sand beneath a canopy of stars and a full moon.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the morning, as the large, glowing moon disappeared in a cloudless sunrise, we noticed a bushy-tailed fox prowling for crumbs from the chicken dinner Hamdy had cooked over an open fire. “They’re part of the tour,’’ Hamdy said after we noticed its footprints beside our sleeping bags. “We feed tourists to him, if we don’t like them.’’</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we returned to Cairo, we found our way through the crowded metro to the overnight train to Aswan, the most southern city in Egypt. We awoke the next morning in the balmier climes along the Nile and sought help from the nearby tourist office in arranging a two-day sail on a felucca, a traditional wooden sailboat.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We experienced the same problem as elsewhere. Hakeem Hussein, the director of the tourist office, said he would arrange a trip for us, but it would cost more than five times what our guidebook said we should pay. “Your book is out of date,’’ he insisted, pressing us to hurry.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We ended up paying half the price Hussein quoted, which was still nearly double what others on our boat had paid. It was another frustrating experience, but the anger dissolved once we set sail. A cool breeze swept over the old boat, propelling us past reed-covered cliffs and skinny cattle. Later, when we docked for the night, our hashish-smoking captain took us to his concrete house, where he offered us sugar-filled tea and his son sold us a wooden crocodile.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The felucca ride ended abruptly early the next morning. We floated across the river and the captain told us to carry our backpacks up a steep bank, where a minibus was waiting to take us three hours north to Luxor, the tourist haven often described as “the world’s greatest open-air museum.’’</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We stopped along the way to see the towering temples in Kom Ombo and Edfu, both of which retain ornate hieroglyphics and towering columns. We passed multiple police checkpoints — the legacy of terrorist attacks over the past decade — until we came upon a large, menacing portrait of the recently deposed long-ruling President Hosni Mubarak in dark sunglasses, the welcome sign to Luxor.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we arrived, the minibus driver asked for triple what we expected to pay. As we argued, a dapper man with designer glasses and a sleek suit appeared out of nowhere and insisted, despite our protests, that he would pay the difference. “You are welcome,’’ he said, refusing to take our money.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spent two days combing through the vast array of temples and tombs. The size and grace of the temple complex of Karnak, which once employed some 80,000 people and until recently welcomed nearly as many tourists daily, was overwhelming.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we finished exploring the antiquities, we caught a five-hour bus to Hurghada, an aging resort on the Red Sea, where we boarded a 30-minute flight across the bright blue water to Sharm el-Sheikh. From the city on the southern tip of the Sinai, we bargained with a hotel shuttle driver to take us to Dahab, a rocky outpost about an hour north on the rugged coast, where we finally had a few days to relax.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spent the time lounging at pillow-filled restaurants along the water, where we negotiated prices for dinner; diving along untrammeled reefs and beside barracuda, where the only sharks were those wheedling us for more cash; and climbing to the top of Mount Sinai, where again we had to haggle at hovels along the way to stay warm.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the end, exhausted yet enlightened, Jess and I rolled north along a mountainous road in a minibus, drifting between sleep and stress about the final challenge of negotiating how to cross the border into Israel.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i></span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-8998390261438177642011-05-04T09:44:00.000-07:002014-01-01T19:13:21.930-08:00Sloshing up Mount Sinai<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/TUZGTmwJsHI/AAAAAAAAKUA/JwDqnxizDos/s640/P1040142.JPG" width="640" /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Click here for more pictures of <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel/Egypt#">Egypt</a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 4/15/2011</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">MOUNT SINAI, Egypt – Well before the cutting winds and frigid rain made our bones feel like they were wrapped in ice, I persuaded my wife Jess, against her better judgment, that it made more sense to climb this hallowed ground at night rather than the day.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We were in the desert, among the driest places on the planet, and it seemed like it would become a magnifying glass for the sun during the day. Moreover, we were advised that the sunrise over the biblical land was like watching the almighty deliver the Ten Commandments all over again, or something like that.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With that image, an admittedly peculiar pull for a pair of nonbelievers, we took our seats in a crowded van for a late-night, two hour ride from Dahab, an old fishing village on the Red Sea that now attracts legions of backpackers. When we arrived at the foot of the mountain at 1 a.m., there were few stars to see and the moon was hidden by a wall of clouds.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even more foreboding was the parking lot, which was crowded with scores of buses that unloaded hundreds of tourists who planned to make the climb at the same time. It was also where we met Nasser, our required Bedouin guide, who insisted we walk beside him and shout “Nasser’s group” every few minutes to ensure we didn’t lose him. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The hike began on a wide trail with a gradual ascent and a soft breeze. As the rock-strewn path wound around the 7,500-foot mountain, it narrowed and became increasingly steep, making it a challenge to share with all the others, especially the camel traffic. With only thin beams from our headlamps to guide us through the darkness, it was hard to spot the lumbering animals coming from both directions. On more than one occasion, a shout from Nasser kept me from being stomped. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About half way up, we stopped at the first teahouse, where we took shelter from the strengthening winds and donned hats and gloves. We had reached the point where the exertion no longer checked the dropping temperature. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The higher we climbed, the stronger the winds blew. We passed more teahouses, where the soup and tea beckoned, and saw camels resting on their knees and fellow climbers passed out.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At about 3 a.m. and still far from the summit, the cold wind brought an icy drizzle, fogging my glasses. The leisurely hike had become a test of endurance and ability to ward off fatigue.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We stopped at another teahouse an hour later and nobody in our small group seemed eager to leave. Half of us conked out and the rest huddled for warmth. Jess looked at me with anguish in her eyes.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, not wanting to miss daybreak, we pushed on to the hardest part of the climb – 750 uneven stones that make up the path known as the Steps of Repentance. As we ascended, the drizzle became a heavy rain, which turned the staircase into a waterfall, drenching our shoes and soaking through supposedly impermeable layers. Misery is a word that only approximates what we were feeling.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About an hour before dawn, we reached a plateau with more teahouses, where vendors barked at us to leave when they noticed we just wanted to stay dry. As we sat in one shelter, where everyone seemed to be shivering and dripping, we rented an old wool blanket that smelled like camel dung. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We were so cold and tired that the stench didn’t faze us, and we wrapped it around each other like it was a godsend. Then we passed out.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moments later, which felt like eons, there was some commotion. Someone had seen a streak of light in the sky, and we scrambled out to make the final ascent.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We climbed the final set of slippery stairs slowly, still clinging to the blanket. The sky brightened but the rain persisted.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the top, the girth of the clouds came into view. Through the mist, we saw a horizon etched by jagged boulders and the silhouettes of holy mountains, a stark panorama that spread for miles in every direction. It was a sight to behold, the kind of splendor that makes it easier to fathom religion.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But the awe was fleeting as the rain pelted us and the wind pierced our soggy blanket. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We waited for the sun as long as we could, but it never came. All we got was a damp light dabbed up by all the clouds.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, as we made the long walk down, we felt more than cold and regret. Even in the freezing rain, even with our minds clouded by fatigue, something more seeped through. It was, I would say in retrospect, a sense of the sacred.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.</span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-2396024700526408372011-03-01T11:30:00.000-08:002014-01-01T20:21:12.714-08:00Seeking Peace in the Golan Heights<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/TUZJs1mVeTI/AAAAAAAAK10/qFhOqvgM5ss/s640/P1040872.JPG" width="640" /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">Click here for more pictures of <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel/Israel#">Israel</a></span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By David Abel |</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">&nbsp;Globe Staff | 2/11/2011</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <b>GOLAN HEIGHTS, Israel</b> – In this disputed land, secluded waterfalls are bound by minefields, rolling, flower-filled hills are etched by tank treads, and dairy farms border live-fire zones, close enough that the rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons accompanies the mooing of cows.<br /><br />The dark soil, rich from ancient volcanic eruptions and millennia of cultivation, had been a battleground for years between Syria and Israel, which seized the strategic highlands during the Six-Day War in 1967 and parried a Syrian effort to retake the area in 1973. The legacy of that conflict remains visible in the remnants of old tanks rusting on the hillsides and more modern arms at the ready nearly everywhere else.<br /><br />Over the last three decades, however, this windswept territory with a temperate climate has been transformed into a breadbasket of Israel, giving rise to kumquat and apple groves, spicy cabernets and tangy olive oil, sweet milk chocolate and dainty pastries. There are now artist colonies and multimillion-dollar industries, hot springs and ski slopes, and settlers and soldiers who drink tea and eat falafel at shops owned by local Druze, the thousands of Muslims who live here and still identify as Syrian.<br /><br />“This place is really heaven,” said Tzvi Raish, 31, who has spent the past four years working at the Golan Heights Winery, which is expanding and planning for the future as if it were in Napa Valley. “Everything here moves at a better pace. It’s quiet and slow. It feels like the definition of peace.”<br /><br />I had long read about this small patch of earth from the comfortable distance of New England, where the equation to end the madness of the persisting conflict seemed so simple: Israel should trade much of the Golan Heights for a viable peace agreement with Syria, just as the Jewish state and Egypt did with the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel also occupied in 1967.<br /><br />But the clarity of such a straight-forward formula, a version of which nearly came to fruition during peace talks three years ago, began to dissolve after I spent a few days last month roaming from the serene waters of the Sea of Galilee in the south to the foothills of the snowcapped peaks of Mount Hermon in the north.<br /><br />In my short time here, it became easier to appreciate how difficult it would be for Israel to cede the valuable high ground to its longtime enemy and how both sides could harbor such an intense attachment to the beauty and bounty of this stark land, where about 40,000 people now live, almost evenly split between Jews and Druze.<br /><br />Indeed, the prospect for a peace agreement anytime soon became even more doubtful in recent weeks as a wave of unrest swept through the Arab world, raising concerns here about the durability of Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. While some have suggested that peace with Syria could bolster the previous agreements and muffle simmering tensions between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which borders the northern Golan, many here who were dubious before now feel it’s even more unlikely.<br /><br />Among those I met who long for the stability of real peace but question whether such a pact is possible was Tamar Sorkin, 59, an artist who has lived here since 1983 in a barbed wire-surrounded settlement that now has 150 families.<br /><br />Like many Israelis who have settled in the Golan, Sorkin first came when she served in the Army. “I loved it,” she said while at work in the shop where she sells her colorful paintings. “I decided to stay because I thought it would be a great experience to build a new place.”<br /><br />She has trouble imagining leaving. “This is my home,” she said “But I really want peace.”<br /><br />A few weeks later, after the revolt in Egypt, she wrote me an email expressing her deep doubts. “In this hectic region, where everything can change in a moment, it would be a sound policy, I think, to be very cautious,” she said. “Of course, I want peace now, but in this neighborhood of ours, to make peace you have to carry a big stick, and in the meantime live as normal a life as possible, making wine and olive oil and thinking about what gift to give my grandson for his birthday.”<br /><br />I came to the Golan after spending a few weeks traveling through Egypt and Jordan, where my fiancée Jess and I met a number of people who – despite the years of peace – still regarded Israel as their enemy. Still, there were others who insisted that, even if the peace remained cold, it made sense and would endure in new regimes.<br /><br />I wanted to know what the people here thought and how they co-existed even though their countries are still technically at war.<br /><br />Our trip to Israel started in the southern city of Eilat, where we had arrived after walking across a demilitarized, no-man’s land from the adjacent Jordanian city of Aqaba. Unlike the border post in Jordan, the one in Eilat was adorned with images from the 1994 peace treaty signing in Washington, including one endearing photo of King Hussein lighting a cigarette for former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.<br /><br />We took a five-hour bus ride from the beachside city in the Negev Desert to Haifa, the country’s largest city in the north. The next afternoon we rented a car and drove from the old port on the Mediterranean coast along a modern highway to the Galilee.<br /><br />After a few hours in traffic, we arrived at night under a canopy of stars that mingled with the twinkling lights of Tiberias along the west coast in Israel proper and the settlements on the Golan’s rocky plateau to the east. We followed a winding road along the large lake, where Jesus was said to have walked on water, and climbed the steep hills of the Golan before coming to the gate of Givat Yoav, one of the territory’s first Israeli settlements founded shortly after the Six-Day War.<br /><br />It’s a sleepy place of squat homes and dairy farms and we had come to stay in a yurt at a Mongolian-styled tent village built by Sara and Benzi Zafrir, both of whom have lived here for decades. After inviting us to their house for dinner, they talked about the history of the land and told us where to find ruins from the many civilizations that had ruled the region, including ancient Israelites, Romans, Assyrians, and Persians. We also discussed what the land meant to them after so many years here and whether they would ever agree to leave.<br /><br />“I have two hats on this question,” Benzi Zafrir said. “I live here, and this is my home. I don’t want to leave. But I wear another hat. That hat is that I live in Israel, and if the government tells me we must go for peace, well, we will go.”<br /><br />As we drove from the hills in the south to the mountains in the north, stopping at wineries and chocolate makers and passing military vehicles and war memorials along the way, we met settlers and soldiers, recent immigrants and shopkeepers, each of whom talked about their mistrust of the Syrian regime and fears that a peace agreement would once again allow Syria to use the high ground to shell Israel. Others said they were satisfied with the status quo and noted that the Golan has been among Israel’s least violent borders since 1973, when Syria launched a surprise attack here on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.<br /><br />But we also met Druze who said that while they were comfortable here and had good relations with their Jewish neighbors, in the end, they wanted this land to revert to Syrian control, as it had been since Syria declared its independence in 1946, two years before Israel.<br /><br />“I have complicated feelings and the future is a very hard question,” said Naeif Gorzallden, 45, who sells sweets in a village near Mount Hermon and has lived in the Golan all his life.<br /><br />Like many Druze who live here, he speaks Hebrew and welcomes his Israeli customers, but he lacks a passport and wants to be reunited with his family across the border.<br /><br />“This is a developed country and there is the rule of law here,” Gorzallden said. “But Syria is my culture. I think it would be easier if it was part of Syria.”<br /><br />Sahar Safadi, 27, who owns a nearby restaurant and also grew up in the Golan, thinks he would earn a better living if the land remains part of Israel. But he, too, feels disconnected from his culture and explained the hardship of seeing his family.<br /><br />“Because I don’t have Israeli citizenship, I don’t have a passport, and that makes me stateless,” he said. “That’s not right, and I have to say, this is Syrian land. But the only answer to solving any of these questions is peace.”<br /><br />He added: “More than anything, we all want peace.”<br /><br />David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.</span><br /><br /><b><u>SIDEBAR</u></b>:<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><b>The Depths of the Western Wall</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/TUZK0GJO_hI/AAAAAAAALBw/dxfzgpPKAwc/s576/P1050169.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/TUZK0GJO_hI/AAAAAAAALBw/dxfzgpPKAwc/s400/P1050169.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />By David Abel<br /><br /><b>JERUSALEM </b>— The giant slabs of limestone, which have remained standing for two millennia despite repeated efforts to demolish them, make up the most sacred structure in the world for Jews, the ancient wall that once protected the Temple Mount.<br /><br />Since at least the time when Roman legions destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD, the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, has been a source of longing and lament for Jews around the world, a focal point for their bygone glory and their yearning for a new unity in a Third Temple.<br /><br />The area around the wall — or Kotel, in Hebrew — had been off-limits to Jews for many years before Israel seized the Old City in Jerusalem from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then, it has attracted Jews from around the world who come here to pray, leave notes for God, or celebrate a bar mitzvah or wedding.<br /><br />Over these intervening years, Israeli archeologists have excavated the area and found that the wall — which is considered holy because it is as close to the most sacred chamber of the First and Second Temples as Jews can worship — is just a small portion of what amounts to a 1,600-foot-long retaining wall that was hidden underground as succeeding generations built over it.<br /><br />The painstaking work of exploring the underworld along the hidden portion of the Western Wall has led to perhaps the most interesting and controversial tour in Jerusalem, one that has to be made by appointment.<br /><br />In 1996, when Israel began allowing visitors into the tunnels below the Temple Mount — where Al Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the third most sacred site of Islam, now stand — it sparked violence that left nearly 100 people dead. Muslims feared the Israelis were burrowing underground in an effort to destroy the Dome of the Rock, where they believe the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.<br /><br />The tunnels have enabled Jews an even closer place to worship the so-called Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary of the First Temple, where the Ten Commandments were said to have been kept in the Ark of the Covenant and near the Foundation Stone, which Jews believe was the first stone God used to create the world.<br /><br />It also allows tourists a perch to see the breadth of the wall and the area’s long arc of history, everything from a Byzantine pool to a Roman street to an aqueduct built by the Maccabeans in 2 BC.<br /><br />The tour starts with a “secret passage’’ that opens to a vaulted hall with evenly cut stones that were hewn at least 2,000 years ago, during the time of the Second Temple. It passes rows of massive, less evenly carved stones along the Western Wall, some weighing more than 600 tons. There are remnants of ancient gates used to enter the Temple Mount, a medieval cistern, ancient quarries, pools, and a dam.<br /><br />There is also an audiovisual exhibit that includes a mockup of the Temple Mount on which stood the First and Second Temples — before they were destroyed — and shows how the area has changed over the centuries.<br /><br />The narrow, dimly lighted passages are filled with explanatory signs and guides who help synthesize the long, complicated history. There are also devout Jews facing the wall and praying throughout the tunnels.<br /><br />A passage from a tour brochure sums up the importance of the area for Jews: “Here at the foot of the Western Wall, more than any other place on earth, the memories of the Jewish past mingle with the hopes of the Jewish future.’’<br /><br /><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-36995268761732047802010-11-02T14:32:00.000-07:002014-01-01T19:19:58.225-08:00Roaming through the Rockies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/TIWbqQDFnmI/AAAAAAAAJtM/ziBZQBkzXhk/s640/P1020535.JPG" width="640" /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;">Click here for more pictures of the </span><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel/TheRockies#" style="line-height: 20px;">Rockies</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel/Bolivia#" style="color: #668844; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 10/15/2010</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">BANFF, CANADA&nbsp;<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">–</span>&nbsp;</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The way the sun gilded the emerald waters seemed like a beckoning from the great beyond – that increasingly remote space outside our expanding electronic bubbles.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was the peak of summer, amid another draining heat wave, when I was loafing online and happened on a website featuring this idyllic image of snow-capped mountains and bright flowers ringing what looked like a secluded lake in a kind of alpine, sun-splashed utopia. I had no idea where it was, but I knew I had to go there.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That night, after a few minutes of research, I learned the placid lake was in the Canadian Rockies. The next day, my fiancée Jessica and I booked tickets to fly there a few weeks later.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“We need this,” she said, as the open windows of our apartment made it warmer inside.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It would be a 10 day break from the heat– in fact, there would be nights when it was so cold we wrapped ourselves in multiple sleeping bags – that took us across 1,800 miles, to peaks higher than 6,500 feet, through seven national parks, two time zones, and more glacier-fed lakes than we could have imagined.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our trip began in late August with a cross-country flight from Boston to Spokane, Wash., where we arrived well after midnight our time, rented a car, loaded our camping gear, and drove an hour east to the Idaho border. We spent the night at a crowded campground, with freight trains running past every hour, but sleep wasn’t the priority.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were out early, if groggy, for our first stop: Coeur d’Alene, an old mining city beside a large lake in northern Idaho. We stopped at a bed and breakfast and warmed up over organic tea, homemade, fruit-covered waffles, and apple slices glazed in a cinnamon sauce, a meal we savored over the coming days as we lived mainly on gorp. Afterward, we drove around a well-appointed downtown, stocked up on supplies, and took Interstate 90 east to Montana, leaving Pacific time for Mountain time.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It felt liberating to cruise at 75 mph along a highway with one of the nation’s highest speed limits – until we got a speeding ticket. (The irony meant nothing to the police officer, who cited us a few minutes after we exited the highway, with too much exuberance, perhaps.) We drove more carefully over the next four hours as the road wound across rolling hills, beside large lakes, and through small towns with wineries, hot springs, and shops offering more permutations of buffalo jerky than I thought possible. Before dusk, we made it to Whitefish, a century-old station on the Great Northern Railway that has become a stop for legions of tourists on their way to the nearby Glacier National Park, where we were headed.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we ate at a restaurant in a downtown that looks like it was plucked from the set of an old Western, the air outside cooled and dark clouds filled the sky. By the time we made it to the car, thunder claps seemed to shake the surrounding mountains and it appeared we had entered a monsoon. It didn’t feel like the best night for camping.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We debated whether to skip our reservation at a campground in Glacier, but as we rolled through the driving rain and called nearby inns listed in our guidebook, we found few options. Despite a gloomy forecast, we decided to stick with the plan. We passed through the western gates of the park, where signs warned that we were in bear country, and found our lakeside campground. There would be no fire or Smores; we set up our tent in the rain, using our car’s headlights, and wrapped ourselves in multiple layers for the night.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the next morning, the rain had given way to a drizzle, and despite the low clouds and thick fog, we witnessed the crystal grandeur of Lake McDonald, the park’s largest lake, where a rainbow of colorful rocks glinted like jewels from below the clear water.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After buying a canister of bear spray, which looked like a fire extinguisher loaded with potent chemicals, we spent the next few days hiking in raincoats along muddy trails shaded by towering cedar and pine trees. We followed the meandering Going-to-the-Sun Road, passing waterfalls and rapid-filled rivers, as it climbed up to Logan Pass, the park’s highest drivable point, where patches of snow covered the mossy earth and we came upon a waterlogged bear lolling about on the road. The shaggy predator looked at us with little interest as we drove by slowly and waved.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the sun finally broke through the clouds, we got our first glimpse of the jagged peaks that give the Rockies their name and the remnants of the vast tracts of ice that give the park its name. (There are now only 25 glaciers left that are larger than 25 acres, down from 150 recorded in 1850, and those that remain are meager relics. If the planet warms at current rates, scientists expect the park’s glaciers will disappear within 20 years.) We hiked to the top of several mountains, at one point trudging knee-deep through snow while wearing shorts. We passed bighorn sheep and ospreys and kept a hand on the bear spray as we crossed berry-filled trails with fresh scat. Bears, we learned, thrive on berries.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After three days in Glacier, we drove north and crossed a lonely checkpoint into Canada to explore Waterton Lakes National Park, which with Glacier became the world’s first international peace park in 1932. We had hoped to catch a boat across the sapphire-colored lake in the heart of the park, but heavy winds kept the boats moored. So we spent the day climbing a steep trail, passing overfriendly squirrels and a less gregarious elk, until we came upon a pristine lake in a clearing near the summit. As we hiked down, a large double rainbow arced over Waterton Lake, forming something of a halo over the Prince of Wales Hotel, an elegant 83-year-old chalet on a bluff where we later sipped hot chocolate during high tea.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That night, under an oversized moon, we drove north toward Calgary. We stopped to camp in a small town on the outskirts of the big city, and the next morning, we did a quick tour of the glass towers and enclosed walkways of a downtown burgeoned by the local oil industry. Then we headed west for the reason we came.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We drove across vast prairie lands and through rolling hills until we were again back among the soaring peaks of the Rockies. The weather was different from the city, colder and stormier, and a bank of clouds hung over the mountain-etched horizon like a fedora, lending it a certain mystery. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet when we arrived we discovered something familiar. Unlike American national parks, those in Canada often have cities at their center, which is where our trip to Banff National Park began, in the town of Banff, which has thousands of residents and everything from large buildings and luxury hotels to a Starbucks and Thai restaurant.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We spent the day hiking on the periphery of town, along one well-beaten trail suspended over several miles on the side of a deep canyon. It took us through a series of increasingly large waterfalls, with the tallest cascading nearly 100 feet into a translucent pool, to a host of small springs called ink pots, where we watched a steady stream of bubbles rise through the turquoise water. That night, we soaked our swollen feet in swimming pool-styled hot springs, which like too many things in Banff in the summer was crowded with tourists.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Still, it was easy enough to separate from the throngs, which we soon found in an empty campground far from town, where the only lights came a canopy of stars that looked like sparklers shooting through the darkness.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day we drove north to find that virtual oasis I came upon on the Web. We first had to pass through another urban center and park in a crowded lot. When we found the lake, its gentle waves splashed the shores of another fancy hotel, and unlike the cropped photo, a beatific scene that seemed to promise a sweet solitude, the milky jade waters seemed to attract as many tourists as Niagara Falls.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And for good reason. At the bottom of a large bowl sculpted by moving glaciers, with pine-robed mountains all around, Lake Louise was even more impressive than the post card picture I had seen online. No matter how many people walked along its rocky banks, the cool breeze washing over the still waters oozed a soft serenity.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After hiking to the base of a nearby glacier, passing smaller, similarly colored lakes in the mountains above, we drove a short distance to Moraine Lake, Louise’s little sister, which once graced the back of Canada’s $20 bill. Similarly set at the bottom of rocky, snow-topped peaks, Moraine’s cobalt waters mirrored the cloudless sky, making the light at sunset seem to float as it sparkled. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was hard to leave such splendor, but there were more sights to see as we drove further north on the Icefields Parkway into Jasper National Park. At one point along the 150 mile drive, where we watched one massive glacier melt before our eyes and glimpsed the breath of the Rockies as they cut through the clouds as far as we could see, I had enough of gazing from afar.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I wanted a more immersive experience.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we approached yet another inviting lake, I decided to heed its call. The sun was shining and the water, of course, looked just right. After a few moments of wavering, I leapt off a small cliff and glided into the stinging cold of the bright blue water, every pore of my body screaming with delighted terror. It was a short but quenching swim.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We spent the last few days taking the long way back to Spokane, passing through Yoho, Canada’s Glacier, and Mount Revelstoke national parks. We left the highway for back roads, at one point boarding a ferry to cross a river. We visited a farmer’s market where we ate Indian food and drove miles down an unpaved road to find a hidden, riverside commune built around natural hot springs.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As dusk fell on our last night, we began to worry that our meandering would leave us stranded, unable to cross the border. Some border posts in the area close shortly after nightfall.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the end, the one we chose remained open and we cruised through the night back into a land where distance seemed longer measured in miles than kilometers.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Near midnight, a few hours before our flight back, we filled up for the last time, returned the car, and checked into a hotel near the airport. We took long showers – savoring the heat after so many frigid nights – and discovered our phones and Internet connections were working again. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the warmth of the climate-controlled room, back with our glowing gadgets, it was comforting to know the world remains more vibrant than the simulacrum of pixels on a computer screen.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-8807075918742442232010-03-23T15:33:00.000-07:002014-01-02T20:33:08.000-08:00Chile: The Longest Country<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/S10Bk_f9UsI/AAAAAAAAIcY/dPNxJ3MlHNk/s1600/P1000837.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/S10Bk_f9UsI/AAAAAAAAIcY/dPNxJ3MlHNk/s640/P1000837.JPG" width="640" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></b><br /><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff &nbsp;| 3/21/2010</span></div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></b><br /><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></span></b></div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">GOLFO DE PENAS, Chile</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">&nbsp;– Well before we boarded the old cargo ship, before it plodded past the protection of the mountainous fjords, before the skies turned stormy and the seas swelled, we were warned.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></span><br /><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were warned not to expect a cruise. We were warned about the smell of the cattle often herded below deck. More than anything, we were warned about the inevitable nausea.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So when the smoky, diesel engines of the 360-foot ship prodded us into the open sea and the rolling waves began sloshing us around, we expected to feel it in our stomachs. What we didn’t expect was that the pummeling would last nearly a full day – through difficult-to-digest meals, perilous showers, and a lot of restless sleep – and that Dramamine would be no cure for the persistent urge to hurl.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“It’s called the Gulf of Punishment for a reason,” said German Balboa, the ship’s second mate, who like most of the crew seemed impervious to the queasiness as he monitored our course for southern Patagonia.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The passage through the Pacific was one leg of a 15-day trip my fiancée Jessica and I took late last year from the top to the bottom of Chile, a sliver of land that extends no more than 109 miles between the Andes and the ocean and stretches 2,700 miles from the sprawling salt flats in the north to the south’s snowcapped volcanoes – longer than any other country.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our journey began some 14,000 feet above sea level at a lonely border post in the cold, dry mountains of southwestern Bolivia, where we had spent three days on a road trip through the desert. We stood in a field of rocks for about an hour, with strong winds nearly barreling us over as we waited with heavy backpacks for a bus to take us across the border.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we finally left, the difference between South America’s richest and poorest country was apparent immediately, a contrast that makes it easier to understand how Chile fared as well as it did after being rocked by a massive earthquake last month. In Bolivia, we had traveled for hundreds of miles without roads, but as soon we crossed into Chile, out of the barrenness of the high mountains, there appeared a modern highway – with smooth pavement and clear dividing lines, reflecting signs and guard rails, even carefully constructed turnoffs for runaway trucks.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was clear, even in this remote corner, that we had arrived in a developed country.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we descended, we felt the atmosphere change, literally. The altitude slowly released its grip on our heads and the frigid air turned sultry. In the distance, as we pealed off layers, we began to see patches of green, an improbable copse rising from a seemingly lifeless land.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The road took us to San Pedro de Atacama, a 1,000-year-old desert outpost of squat adobe buildings, dusty streets, and flocks of tourists who come for the arid air and nearby natural wonders, including geysers, salt flats, and flamingo-filled lagoons. After the bus dropped us off near the central plaza, we changed money, found a place to stay, and set our watches forward an hour.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With little time to explore, and the afternoon slipping into dusk, we rented bicycles and rode into a howling wind for the Valle de La Luna, or the Valley of the Moon. It was a long 10-mile trip, against a sand-strewn wind, under a hot sun, and up steep hills, but the slanting light and the spreading shadows embossed an eerie, desolate beauty on the surrounding lunar-like landscape of goopy rocks and rolling dunes. As the sun sank over the horizon, the sky ignited in a slow symphony of colors, with orange and gold strands of light burning out in wisps of pinks and purples, until darkness revealed the bright arc of the Milky Way, lighting the way back.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day we hopped another bus for an hour ride to the copper mining town of Calama, where we caught a flight south to Santiago. The two-hour trip offered a glimpse of the oddity of such a long country, in which the small northern cities are separated from the capital by a vast emptiness of fallow plains, rocky mountains, and dry canyons. The only green we saw arrived with an accompanying cloud of smog just a few miles before we landed in Santiago, where nearly half of the nation’s 17 million people live.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Friends picked us up and drove us into the city on a modern highway with high-speed electronic tolls. They gave us a quick tour of the downtown, including a stop at La Moneda, the 205-year-old presidential palace that was partially destroyed in 1973 when Augusto Pinochet, then the army chief, ordered it bombed during the coup d’etat he led against President Salvador Allende. I was surprised to find in a plaza beside the palace a large statue of Allende, a democratically elected socialist who allegedly committed suicide before being captured. The controversial project was unveiled in 2003 by the ruling center-left administration, 13 years after Pinochet relinquished the presidency.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our speedy evening tour of Santiago ended in a sprint for another bus, which we caught just as it was pulling out of the station. We spent the night rolling further south in seats that reclined considerably and had ample foot rests. When we awoke about 10 hours later, just outside the city of Pucon in central Chile, it seemed like we crossed into a different biome, where lush vegetation replaced parched deserts. There was a bounty of trees, lots of birds and flowers, and Lago Villarica, one of a series of large, shimmering lakes in the region.</span></span></span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We walked from the bus station to the city center, a tranquil retreat of cozy restaurants, chocolate shops, and dozens of tour operators, all below the towering Volcan Villarica, an active, perfectly conical volcano that rises more than 9,000 feet above the lake. We admired the menacing mountain on the horizon, which last erupted in 1971, until it disappeared in the clouds. Then we did what most tourists do in Pucon and spent the next few days riding horses through the nearby hills, whitewater rafting on a swollen river, and soaking in hot springs, among other things.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was the closest we came to relaxing on a trip in which speed was a priority, but after two nights beside the lake, we were on the move again. We decided to make a brief excursion to Argentina.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a heavy downpour, we boarded another bus for a journey on a muddy road over the Andes. It twisted through cloud-shrouded mountains covered with monkey-puzzle trees, indigenous evergreens that have long trunks crowned by symmetrical branches with thick, spiky leaves. It was an all-day trip that required hours of waiting at border posts from both countries for bureaucrats to stamp the passports and search the luggage of everyone on our bus, reflecting a legacy of mistrust between the neighbors that made it feel as if we were passing through the Iron Curtain.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we finally crossed the border, we stopped for a few hours in San Martín de los Andes, a lakeside city like Pucon that has the alpine whiff of Switzerland. The next bus took us on a curvy, dirt road past the so-called seven lakes, the last being the most majestic, Lago Nahuel Huapi.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The 200-square-mile stretch of cobalt looks like a small sea beside the mountains that make up San Carlos de Bariloche, the continent's mecca for skiers, boaters, and climbers, including everyone from groups of Israeli tourists to high-ranking Nazis, some of whom lived here for decades after World War II.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We arrived at midnight, found a guest house, and after a brief sleep woke early to explore the city on foot and bicycle. We sampled chocolates and gobbled up the famed steak, even though Jessica is a vegan. We petted the puppies of St. Bernards used to lure tourists into overpriced photo shoots. And we peddled a hilly route that took us beside waterfalls and poppy-covered fields, to hidden beaches and aromatic welcoming breweries, and up 8,000 feet to the top of Cerro Catedral, one of South America's largest ski resorts, where the rushing wind purrs with a cool serenity.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After three days in Argentina, we made the long trip back over the Andes and through the slow motion of customs, until we reached another lakeside city called Puerto Varas. We arrived there just in time to join a large crowd by the Lago Llanquihue and watch an unexpectedly impressive fireworks show to celebrate New Year's Eve. Strangers shared champagne, offered up hugs, and helped us find a place for the night.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning a minibus took us a half hour south to Puerto Montt, where we boarded the Navimag ferry for our three-day sail through the fjords of southern Chile. Guidebooks warned us to keep our expectations in check. We knew there could be rough seas and foul weather. But there was no preparing for the Golfo de Penas, and the way our stomachs responded.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Along with others on the old cargo ship that ferries food, livestock, and other goods between northern and southern Patagonia, we asked ourselves more than once why we chose to spend hundreds of dollars and precious time cooped up in such misery. The answer came when the clouds lifted and we passed back into the smooth waters of the protected canals: We stood on an outside deck as a breeze washed over us and the ship cruised through narrow, dolphin-filled channels with dramatic views of uninhabited islands, moss-covered mountains, and the wall of jagged ice called Pio XI, the largest glacier in South America.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The voyage ended when we arrived in Puerto Natales, a century-old port at the southern tip of Chile in a province called Última Esperanza, or Last Hope, where the sheep industry once reigned. It's now better known as the gateway for Torres del Paine, the nation's premier national park.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We piled into the back of a pickup truck owned by an older couple who persuaded us to stay at their bed and breakfast for about $20 a night. After dropping our bags there, we stocked up on food, consolidated our camping supplies, and took a two-hour bus ride to the national park.</span></span></span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Even though it was late in the afternoon, we were so far south that we had hours of light to hike, enough that we kept going until 10 p.m. We climbed for six hours over glacier-fed lakes up thousands of feet to the base of the three granite towers that give the park its name. We camped through a freezing night but warmed up the next morning by sweating up the steep, boulder-covered ascent to the massive spires, which rise from a bed of snow like skyscrapers and overlook an emerald lagoon in a bowl-shaped space that feels like a holy temple.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Over the next days, we kept moving. We hitchhiked to different parts of the park. We took a short cruise beside the famous Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina. We took another bus further south to Punto Arenas, the country's most southern city, and then we hopped on a flight back to Santiago.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A day later, we were on another flight headed home, where for the first time in weeks, we finally got some sleep, exhaled from the visual intensity, and yearned for a vacation from our vacation.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i></div></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-88059860148700972922010-03-09T20:07:00.000-08:002014-01-01T19:27:00.527-08:00Crossing the Bolivian Desert<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/S1z_2KUknwI/AAAAAAAAIYY/uikRZyAtkTA/s1600/P1000652.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/S1z_2KUknwI/AAAAAAAAIYY/uikRZyAtkTA/s640/P1000652.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Click here for more pictures of <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel/Bolivia#">Bolivia</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;3/7/2010</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>SALAR DE UYUNI, Bolivia </b>-- Seven of us squeezed into the decade-old Land Cruiser with 229,000 miles on its odometer and a roof rack loaded with a hefty gas reserve, hundreds of pounds of backpacks, and enough dulce de leche-smeared pancakes and other snacks to last three days.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The mud-splashed Toyota with half its dashboard gauges inoperative would have to make it across 600 miles of some of the planet’s most forbidding land, from a vast desert of windswept salt flats through rocky, moonlike plains splotched with arsenic-filled lakes to a geyser field in the freezing peaks that crown the Andes.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was only an hour into the trip when, after a brief stop, our driver, Raul Quispe, ordered everyone out of the SUV. He fished through a tool kit and spent a few minutes turning the key and pumping the gas, without effect. He decided on a low-tech solution to what appeared to be a dead battery.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Everyone needs to push,’’ he commanded us, a group of sandal-clad tourists from Europe and the States.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On a journey without roads, even unpaved ones, it was the first glimpse of the risks and occasional improvisation involved in driving across Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, and through a surrounding desert that rises more than 15,000 feet above sea level. We would pass emerald-colored lagoons filled with flamingos, and herds of llamas and guanacos moseying through the mountains. But there were no gas stations, no cellphone signals, no help other than Quispe and other Bolivian guides, who had to be as knowledgeable about their vehicles as about the daunting landscape.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I know every part of this car,’’ Quispe boasted, after we shoved the SUV a few feet and the muffler chuffed to life.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our trip late last year began in La Paz, the capital, where Jessica and I had booked the three-day tour through a local travel agency for $110 per person. They advised us to keep our expectations low, particularly for accommodations, meals, and transportation.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The agency’s website was surprisingly blunt, even noting that tourists had died on previous trips. “Due to the harshness of the terrain, vehicle breakdowns are common,’’ it warned. “We would like to make it clear that things are not as reliable, comfortable, and professional as we would like. . . . If things go wrong you are faced with the reality of travel in a remote area of a developing country.’’</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a day wheezing through the high-altitude streets of La Paz, where markets crowd nearly every corner and vendors sell everything from large sacks of nuts to bottles of imitation Viagra, we boarded an overnight bus to Uyuni, a bygone railroad junction about 12 hours south.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had been told the trip into the high desert plains known as the altiplano would be rough and sleepless, but the bus’s ample seats reclined considerably, the crew served us hot food as if we were on an airplane, and the bumpy roads weren’t a match for our fatigue. We passed out and awoke an hour before the squat buildings of the isolated town of 10,000 people appeared on the horizon.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With a hot morning sun slanting over a dusty, pockmarked street in the center of Uyuni, we stepped outside and found a young woman from the travel agency who escorted us to a small office. Before leaving, we stocked up on water and visited the local customs office to have our passports stamped, which was required because there were no consular officials where we would be exiting the country.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When the driver arrived, we heaved our bags on the roof and he wrapped them in an old tarp, securing it with a thick rope. We crowded into the SUV, drove past stray dogs traipsing through town, and rolled onto the closest approximation of a road we would encounter over the next three days.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first stop, a few miles out of town, was the so-called train cemetery, a wasteland of rusting locomotives left to rot in the desert after the local mining industry collapsed in the 1940s. The century-old trains are slowly decomposing over the barren plains, their steel wheels burrowing into the dry earth, a testament to when foreign companies ferried minerals to the Pacific ports that Bolivia lost in a 19th-century war with Chile.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The sandy road from town quickly gave way to an evaporated sea that stretches more than 4,000 square miles, or 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. From a distance, the blinding white expanse of Salar de Uyuni looks as flat as the Kansas plains, but there are countless bumps along the salty horizon, most in the shape of crusty polygons. The cracks in the earth have formed over millennia as a briny liquid rises from the remains of the prehistoric sea below and crystallizes in geometric patterns on the surface.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quispe took us to an area where we watched as the brine bubbled into large puddles. When those evaporate, locals shovel the heaps of salt into neat piles, which they collect to sell as table salt. Afterward, we visited an old hotel made of salt - salt brick walls, salt tables and chairs, even salt bed frames. (The government ordered the hotel closed a decade ago - because of its effect on the pristine surroundings - but it remains very much in operation.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Later, we traveled to the Isla Incahuasi, a seemingly improbable island of towering, thousand-year-old cacti, fossilized coral, and volcanic rock that looms over the desolate land like an oasis without water. After a hike up a craggy trail to the top, we ate lunch beside wandering ostriches and other camera-toting tourists, many of whom played with the optical illusions created by the unbounded horizon to take loopy pictures.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From there, we drove for hours across the empty desert, beneath dark clouds and ribbons of lightning, until we arrived at a gate and the first buildings of a project that could transform Bolivia. The government is building a pilot project to mine lithium - Salar de Uyuni has more reserves of the increasingly important mineral than anywhere on the globe - and it eventually hopes to supply the world with the ingredients needed to power everything from cellphones to electric cars.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spent the night in an old mining town outside the Salar. If having to push our SUV hadn’t made us understand the budget nature of our trip, the lodging did. We stayed in a drafty building made of cement blocks and slept in small rooms on lumpy beds. There were showers, but hot water was extra.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we crossed from broad, volcano-ringed valleys where llamas roam to a series of mineral-rich lagoons that vary in hue from jade to lime, each home to hundreds of pink-necked flamingos. We passed the so-called “rock tree,’’ one of a series of volcanic boulders that tower over the otherwise featureless desert like petrified trees sculpted by centuries of wind-borne sand.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quispe drove mainly uphill, and by the end of the day we arrived at the blood-colored Laguna Colorado, where the arid air had turned frigid and we felt the altitude. We stopped for the night at a hovel even more spare than the previous night’s. As we watched the sun splinter into strands of red, orange, and violet light, Quispe described how he makes the three-day trip twice a week and spends his only day at home repairing the battered Land Cruiser.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The worst part of the job is the routine,’’ he said. “But I’ve been lucky. I’ve never had an accident.’’</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a night shivering under sleeping bags in a room our group shared, we woke up before dawn and Quispe navigated the rocky path through snow-capped mountains more than 15,000 feet above sea level. He drove at speeds as if we were on a highway. At sunrise, we saw a curtain of fog rising in the distance, and as we approached, we saw a field of bubbling geysers. There were no fences, and we walked a slippery path through clouds of steam beside hot cauldrons, where a tourist fell in and died several years ago.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Afterward, Quispe raced the other drivers down the mountains to a pool of hot springs, where we soaked our cold limbs, drank hot chocolate, and learned of the camaraderie among the drivers. Another SUV had blown a tire, and we watched as they repaired it together - inflating a tube with one vehicle’s engine compressor, using various tools to install the tube beneath the rubber, and locking it on the rim with the help of another driver, who drove over it methodically with his SUV.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“We have to help each other,’’ Quispe said. “That’s the only way to survive out here.’’</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We left on a gravel path that curved through rolling hills of loose sand and jagged rock formations that Quispe said inspired the goopy landscapes of Salvador Dalí’s paintings. After seven years of making the same trip, Quispe didn’t need a map. He made his own road as we drove over dunes and below steep peaks.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The final stop of our three-day tour of the Bolivian desert seemed like the finale of a fireworks show: Laguna Verde, an arsenic-filled lake that reflects a towering volcano in its placid, emerald waters. There were no flamingos clustered on those shores.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We climbed out of the SUV and walked to the edge of a sandy bluff, where we gazed in silence as gulls rode the cool winds raking the lake. We stood there as long as we could, listening to the whistling of the wind, sucking in the dry, salty air, wishing to take a swim.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was like the landscape of an imaginary planet - stark, poisonous, but eerily inviting, with colors that seemed too bright to be real.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then we had to go.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had a bus to catch out of the desert for the next leg of our journey, which would take us across the Chilean border and to the bottom of the continent.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-83006621857771816422010-01-19T18:32:00.000-08:002014-01-19T18:33:32.237-08:00My Dad, Unflinching<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MsxzcB7tofo/UtyKpPswrsI/AAAAAAAAeHM/TbpN3cejJZg/s1600/IMG_0252.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MsxzcB7tofo/UtyKpPswrsI/AAAAAAAAeHM/TbpN3cejJZg/s1600/IMG_0252.JPG" height="360" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;June 17, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I was always convinced my father had no fear.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This was a man who took me for joyrides on a small motorcycle, without helmets. When we went sailing, his smile broadened the more the boat heeled, and the more my mom looked at him like she might throw him overboard.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He was the reason I took an interest in traveling.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I was a child, he built a farm in the rural highlands of the Dominican Republic, one of a number of businesses he started. The first time he brought us there he drove up a dirt road that disappeared into the clouds and looped beside thousand-foot drops. He never flinched when trucks passed inches from us, barreling down in the opposite direction.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I still remember the way the pine trees scented the tropical breeze and the rich soil spurred everything from flowers to eggplants to bell peppers, all of which my dad would eventually grow.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Shortly before he died of cancer last year, I asked if anything scared him. At first, he didn't seem to understand the question. Then, with a mischievous gleam in his eyes that I hope I've inherited, he said: "Mom. If she threatens me, I listen."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.&nbsp;</i></span></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-5609483919142471522009-03-22T15:35:00.000-07:002014-01-01T19:30:54.423-08:00Road trip through Africa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="480" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_ojgujIvF1iw/SYYK_ZsUqYI/AAAAAAAAHKQ/YjBlBUYWWuQ/s640/IMG_1853.JPG" width="640" /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">Click here for more pictures from <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel">Africa</a>. &nbsp;</span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 3/22/09</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">HOBAS, Namibia</span> -- Across the moonlike horizon, the only hint of life was a trail of dust kicked up by wild ostriches. The only sound was the hiss of an arid wind scouring the vast plains. And as our scrawny rental car rumbled over the craggy desert road, casting long shadows as the morning sun sent the temperature over 100 degrees, we felt an ominous thud.<br /><br />Given the rock-strewn road, given the hundreds of miles that separated us from help, given where we had been and what we had already survived, it seemed better to ignore the jolt – and my girlfriend's glower.<br /><br />"Not good," she said, urging me to slow down.<br /><br />By that point, thousands of miles into our trip through southern Africa, we had become accustomed to bumps on the road, and other surprises that come with driving a compact car in a land better suited for military vehicles.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our journey began in Johannesburg</span>, where we rented a carrot-colored version of the Honda Fit. The agents at the local Avis didn't seem concerned that we were about to test its limits, or that we would be driving with just one spare, a donut. Getting permission to cross borders required little more than a 15 minute wait, a $100 fee, and a few forms for our destination in Windhoek, Namibia.<br /><br />More difficult was learning to drive on the opposite side of the road. For days, every time I tried to activate the blinkers, I hit the windshield wipers. When I tried to flash the brights, I washed the windshield. And with every turn, I had to overcome an inner GPS that kept guiding me to the right – and a possible head-on collision.<br /><br />Learning to look left was even more challenging with jetlag. But the real test came a few hours after we exited the well-maintained highway from Johannesburg and headed east into the winding mountains toward what our guidebook called "one of South Africa's most impressive natural features." Unfortunately, as we approached the Blyde River Canyon, it began to pour and a thick mist shrouded the snaking road. Visibility dropped to the brake lights of the car in front of us.<br /><br />After a few hours circling through the clouds and seeing nothing but fog, we managed to find the way to our bed and breakfast and then to Kruger National Park, the nation's storied wildlife sanctuary that borders Mozambique and rivals the size of Israel.</span><br /><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our self-guided safari began on a finely paved road that offered nearly instant glimpses of grazing zebra and watchful impala. They all seemed so sweet, almost docile, unperturbed by our presence. Then we came upon a herd of elephants.<br /><br />We drove beside one chomping on a tree’s leaves. We sat about 15 feet away and admired how the massive beast seemed so limber, so light on its feet, as it stretched its wrinkled trunk into the branches, curled its tip around a clump of green, and gently dropped the breakfast into its mouth. It felt like being at a zoo, but we were the ones in the cage. Yet there was a difference: Our cage didn’t afford the same protection as steel bars.<br /><br />As I snapped pictures from the passenger seat, agog at the seeming gentleness of this blubbery behemoth, the elephant started to approach us. At first, it sauntered in our direction, its floppy ears almost waving hello. Then it picked up speed. At less than 10 feet away, the elephant appeared to be in a full-on charge, and I dropped my camera in my lap.<br /><br />“Drive, go – hit it!" I yelled, as Jess put the car in gear and floored the gas.<br /><br />It was a good lesson – to keep a healthy distance from the wildlife – as we would pass countless other large animals – rhinos, lions, hippos, buffalo, everything from aggressive baboons with a reputation for opening car doors to monkeys that liked to steal the rubber from windshield wipers to giraffe that didn't find our curiosity endearing when we wanted to take a peek at their newborn.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">After a few days, we left the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">low</span></span>-lying savanna of broad grasslands and scattered, boulder-filled hills for a landscape that looked more like the Berkshires than how we imagined Africa. The provincial road we took south toward the great plateau of Lesotho climbed hundreds of miles along rolling, velvety green hills, through groves of pine trees, past rainbow-haloed farms. But the deeper we drove into the heart of South Africa, the more it became clear where we were.<br /><br />At nearly every turn of the road, we witnessed the country’s enduring ironies: children begging beside some of the world’s most fertile land; sprawling shantytowns of zinc-roofed huts in the shadow of gleaming high rises; the tall, barbed-wired walls that enclose white subdivisions, underscoring how the official end of Apartheid has yet to yield an end to segregation.<br /><br />Yet as we passed from the rocky, table-topped peaks of the Drakensberg to the seaside cliffs along the lagoon of Knysna, from the high desert scrubland where elephants feed with warthogs in Addo National Park to the lavender fields of wine country in Franschhoek, it became easier to understand why so many tribes and vying Europeans were willing to fight for this land.<br /><br />And nowhere did the stark beauty stand out more than around Cape Town, a peninsula at the tiptoe of the continent, where steep mountains rise from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the rich flaunt their wealth in gaudy cars and the less prosperous offer to watch them for a few rand, and a mélange of Africans, Europeans, Indians, Malaysians, and many others mix more than anywhere else in the country.<br /><br />We skipped the more touristy sights, such as the cable car ride up to the cloud-covered Table Mountain and the overbooked sail to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years imprisoned in a tiny cell. Instead, we walked the center of the city, from the opulent Mount Nelson Hotel to the 350-year-old Slave Lodge, where thousands of slaves were confined in horrific conditions before being sold. We explored the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, home to 9,000 indigenous plants and flowers; swam in the cold, turquoise waters off Boulders Beach, where thousands of penguins putter and nuzzle in the white sand; and hiked the cliffs along the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwestern point of Africa.<br /><br />We could have spent weeks in Cape Town, but we were on a tight schedule. It was time to leave the ocean for the desert. For the equivalent of about $25, we filled our tank and drove about 300 miles north to Namibia, a former German colony known as much for its towering sand dunes as its diamond mines.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">When we arrived at the sun-baked border</span> in the late afternoon, the heat remained intense. Outside, the scattered quiver trees, a squat and spiny symbol of the desolate land, provided little shade. Thankfully, crossing involved little more than handing over our passports, getting our car’s papers stamped, and shaking a few hands. The English-speaking border guards echoed our guidebooks, assuring us we would be fine with our two-wheel-drive car. Their only advice: Don’t drive at night and never pass a gas station without filling up – even if we had three-quarters of a tank.<br /><br />Minutes after leaving, however, it felt like we were on the moon, with a lot more gravity. The road to our campsite resembled a rollercoaster, and it was among the better roads we would experience over the next week. But as we set up our tent and slipped into the warm river below, we watched a purple dusk give way to a cool breeze and a canopy of stars, and we knew it had been worth the trek.<br /><br />The next day, after canoeing on the border-dividing Orange River, we ventured further north, along an increasingly lonely road. For hours at a time, we saw no sign of human life. Our cell phone flashed “No Service” and the GPS that served us well in South Africa searched fruitlessly for civilization. When we finally made it to our next destination, a 100-mile span of gouged rock called the Fish River Canyon, we breathed deeply as we watched another crimson sunset dissolve into another glittering night. Maybe we were worrying too much, I thought.<br /><br />The next morning, as the temperature quickly surged, I drove with more confidence. The car could handle it, I thought. The roads looked worse than they were, I said to myself as I watched a pair of ostriches sprinting in the distance. It was about that point when I failed to notice a sharp rock jutting from the center of the road. The car shuddered. Jess looked at me with a combination of fear and pleading for me to slow down.<br /><br />As we rolled on, I began to smell something unusual for the middle of the desert, something acrid. Neither of us wanted to acknowledge it. A few minutes later, when we came across a pack of antelope-like animals, we stopped to snap pictures. Jess got out to investigate the smell.<br /><br />“Oh my God,” she said, adding stronger language as she gaped in awe at the damage.<br /><br />When I got out, I saw mostly melted rubber, shards hanging off the rim. The front left tire was completely destroyed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So we dug out the donut, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">j</span></span>acked up the car, and pulled off the remains of the old tire. Then we set the donut and lowered the car. From there, we knew it would be a long drive. One more bad rock, and we would be walking.<br /><br />The closest town was about 150 miles away. So we went easy on the water, marked the mile whenever we passed a human being, and drove slowly down the rocky road, averaging about 20 mph.<br /><br />The stress was enough to make us think about turning in the car. But there was so much left to see.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After we replaced the tire, an ordeal that set us back a few hours and less than $100, we drove further north into an increasingly otherworldly landscape, where we would meet orphaned cheetahs, explore a forest of quiver trees, hike through deep canyons, and climb oceans of sand that sprouted thousand-foot dunes.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />The roads didn’t get any better. In fact, they seemed to get worse, almost beyond imagination. So we drove slowly, often ridiculously slowly, and we both watched the road more closely.<br /><br />Turtles crawling along the road seemed to pace us, but we were enjoying the ride.<br /><br />After several weeks, we finally made it to the paved roads of Windhoek, where we hand-washed the Honda, scrubbing out the dirt from every crevice.<br /><br />We decided we would let someone else do the driving, and a few hours later, we left Namibia on a 22-hour bus ride to Zambia, undaunted by the long road ahead.<br /></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i></div></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-44885725397979890302009-03-20T10:08:00.000-07:002014-01-17T12:42:04.997-08:00The Thunder of Zambia<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1z59JagxRUQ/UsTeQu5lAEI/AAAAAAAAUe8/SVQsoPf2fEo/s1600/CIMG5482.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1z59JagxRUQ/UsTeQu5lAEI/AAAAAAAAUe8/SVQsoPf2fEo/s640/CIMG5482.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Click here for more pictures of&nbsp;<u><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/117528831952772399065/Zambia?noredirect=1">Zambia</a></u></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;6/22/2009<br /><br />LIVINGSTONE, Zambia -- Before our raft capsized in a muddy river teeming with crocodiles, before we found ourselves eye to eye with the jittery parents of a newborn giraffe, before a horde of monkeys raided our tea platter and swiped our sugar cubes, we boarded a rickety bus in sweltering Windhoek, Namibia, for a long journey into the night.<br /><br />As the desert sun bled over the horizon in a rainbow of crimson, we left the Namibian capital for a 22-hour ride to Livingstone. But the trip nearly ended before it began. Shortly after the driver pulled onto the one-lane highway, two police cars with flashing lights forced us to stop on the bush-shrouded shoulder. The officers chatted with the driver, and then, inexplicably, we were off again, into an increasingly dark night, the bus’s headlights the only sign of humanity in the visible distance.<br /><br />“They were my friends,’’ the driver told me later at a rest stop. “We know the police. They don’t worry us; what worries us is running into animals. They’re attracted to the headlights.’’<br /><br />He said he had been luckier than other drivers and had slammed into only a few antelope-like animals in the years he had been making the night trip to Zambia. Yet the prospect of colliding with large, antler-bearing creatures provided too much roadkill for thought as we sped through the darkness. Then the air conditioning cut off, and my girlfriend and I squirmed as we tried to sleep, the sweat pooling in our open eyes as we questioned our wisdom.<br /><br />It was the last leg of a monthlong trip earlier this year that began in Johannesburg, and we were ready to have someone else do the driving after navigating thousands of miles in a compact rental car on treacherous roads in South Africa and Namibia.<br /><br />When we finally crossed the border a day later and arrived in Livingstone, the driver deposited us on a dusty road in the damp heat of this small, growing city, which has become an increasingly popular base for exploring Victoria Falls since the political and economic implosion of neighboring Zimbabwe.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like a knight in a shiny SUV, Richard Chanter, a British expatriate and local DJ, was waiting to pick us up and take us to the nearby lodge he has owned for the past decade. He helped us get our bearings, and after much-needed showers, we set off to explore the city in the remaining light.<br /><br />We walked down several small streets marked by gaping potholes and crowded with everyone from students in their bright school uniforms to the elderly hauling groceries on their heads. We found our way to the main street, where old, diesel-spewing trucks, bright blue taxis, and loud motorcycles raced around each other in an ungainly minuet. Along the side of the road, beneath decaying cement buildings, we browsed wood carvings, beaded bowls, wire sculptures, and other trinkets at the local tourist market.<br /><br />The next morning, Chanter drove us through the city, to the edge of what the Scottish missionary doctor and explorer David Livingstone discovered in 1855 and called Victoria Falls, in honor of the British queen. Zambians call it Mosi-oa-Tunya, or the Smoke that Thunders, a name we would soon come to appreciate.<br /><br />He dropped us off by a scrum of trinket merchants and a one-room museum, where we were directed to a gate, paid the equivalent of a $20 fee, and carefully made our way down a narrow path through a lush bower. Before we could see anything, we felt its presence. A fine drizzle began to soak us, and then we could hear the low thunder. As we made our way down an increasingly slick path, we caught a glimpse between the foliage. And there it was: the mighty wall of water and the cloud of mist rising hundreds of feet into the sky.<br /><br />“Unbelievable,’’ Jess said. “Unbelievable.’’<br /><br />The 360-foot-tall falls, more than twice as high as Niagara, stretches out over a mile and is among the world’s widest. Here the wide placid Zambezi River bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe is transformed. The closer we came, the more the drizzle turned into a squall. But with rainbows arcing in every direction, wild flowers leaning off moss-covered rocks, and water cascading down in a soothing symphony, we were mesmerized for hours, oblivious to the cold shower as we dawdled along the edge and looked through the fog to Zimbabwe.<br /><br />We dried off later at the Royal Livingstone, a five-star hotel less than a mile from Victoria Falls, where guests pay more than $900 a night. It was a peculiar place in a land where many people live in thatch-roofed villages, and it felt uncomfortably anachronistic with black waiters in white gloves and long-tailed tuxedos serving mainly white tourists. But we couldn’t pass up the hotel’s famous afternoon tea, and its beckoning buffet of cakes, cookies, and other gooey treats.<br /><br />Any concern we had about the legacy of colonialism faded as we discovered more pressing issues. While we nibbled on crumpets and slurped pudding on the riverside patio’s leather couches, we noticed a few vervet monkeys staring at us. They seemed cute and entertaining as they frolicked on the manicured greens. What we learned was that they were even more interested in us, particularly what we had on our plates.<br /><br />We soon found ourselves at the center of a daily duel between the turquoise-testicled monkeys and the patio’s lone security guard, a young man armed with just a slingshot. The monkeys worked together to foil the guard, climbing on the hotel’s roof, lurking behind the couches, feinting in different directions. Whenever the guard turned his head, they took turns darting toward our table, climbing up and grabbing whatever they could, making it a less than leisurely lunch.<br /><br />“They’re very smart,’’ the guard said after one monkey crept into the dining room, opened a drawer, and rifled through it for goodies before being chased away.<br /><br />The next day, after more fun with the monkeys, we unwittingly decided to test the boundaries of other wildlife in the area. We had learned that a giraffe in the bush that surrounded the hotel had recently given birth and thought we might try to catch a glimpse of the calf. A driver at the Royal Livingstone offered to take us on foot to find the giraffe, which wasn’t difficult, given their size.<br /><br />But it was a brief tour. As we cut through the dense foliage following our guide, we spotted a giraffe’s pointy ears. The giraffe spotted us, too, and looked at us intently as we approached. Moments later, its mate came into view, looking at us with a less curious gaze, and then it began moving toward us.<br /><br />“Run,’’ our guide shouted abruptly.<br /><br />So we ran, following him out of the bush in a sprint, at once afraid to look back and sad we didn’t get to see the baby.<br /><br />Having had our fill of adventure on land, we decided to explore the river. The day before we left Livingstone, we set out on a rafting trip down the Zambezi, Africa’s fourth largest river and home to crocodiles, hippos, and something even more menacing: a series of Class 5 rapids, which the local rafting companies dubbed “Commercial Suicide,’’ “Gnashing Jaws of Death,’’ and “The Terminator,’’ among others.<br /><br />We learned the power of the warm river within minutes, and over the course of several hours, we probably spent more time overboard than on the raft. At one point, one wave of whitewater overturned our boat, flipping it from the front to the back, dumping all nine of us, including our guide. I was launched about 10 feet and spent a few seconds underwater scrambling for air. It was good fun.<br /><br />The guide assured us not to worry about the crocs or hippos, as the water was moving too fast for them to feed on us. But our interest in swimming flagged when we saw a few of the toothy reptiles sunbathing on rocks jutting out of the river.<br /><br />By that point, the trip was nearly done, and we were on our way back to Livingstone - sore, exhilarated, and ready for a vacation from our vacation.<br /><br />The next morning, after five days in Zambia, Chanter dropped us off at the small, local airport. We sucked in the humid air and admired the billowy clouds as we walked across the tarmac to our Johannesburg-bound plane.<br /><br />As our plane took off and climbed into the hazy sky - we were happy to no longer be traveling on sketchy roads - we could see a broad expanse of central Africa for miles, varying hues of seemingly untouched green in every direction, except one.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Before our plane banked into the clouds, the pilot drew our attention to what looked like smoke rising from the ground. In the distance, we could see the deep gash in the green. It was our last glimpse of Victoria Falls.<br /><br /><i>David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i></span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-57202016351350990312008-02-27T09:05:00.000-08:002014-01-01T19:42:34.515-08:00Into the Moonlight on Essex Bay<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7RYvArOswmI/UsTf9OskaoI/AAAAAAAAUfI/CKA5NuE9YUI/s1600/essexbaybig__1256319107_1439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="452" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7RYvArOswmI/UsTf9OskaoI/AAAAAAAAUfI/CKA5NuE9YUI/s640/essexbaybig__1256319107_1439.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel |&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Staff |&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">10/25/2009</span><br /><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ESSEX BAY – In the golden light of dusk, we slipped into the warm water and followed the receding tide from the beach.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Overhead, the sky was a darkening canopy of blues, with wispy clouds floating on a pink horizon. A gentle breeze rippled over tall grass in the distance, brushing us with the softness of velvet. There was no late-summer humidity, no hint of the onset of fall, not a bug or concern in the air.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As our kayaks cut through the silent waters of the bay, it was a reminder of why September is New England’s most serene month.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had come here for a moonlight tour of Essex Bay, a nook of the ocean that seeps into the marshlands between Cape Ann and Crane Beach. But day dissolved into night we discovered more than the beauty that floods in and out of this wildlife refuge an hour north of Boston.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The tour began on the rocky shores just north of the Walker Creek Marshes, and several guides led our group of a dozen kayakers through the shallow water. We paddled toward the setting sun and watched the gold light burn into an orange haze.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we curved around Cross Island, a barrier for much of the surrounding estuaries, we came across flocks of egrets, herons, and other birds prancing through the shallows, many of which use the bay as a way station on their long journeys to teach their young how to fly.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We passed other small islands and old shacks moored in the bay, the legacy of a time when local authorities were less strict about development on the water. The more we paddled, the more the greens of the surrounding grass and the changing colors of the sky seemed to merge like an Impressionistic painting. The orange blurred with pinks and reds, until the sky glowed a soft purple.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we cut through the bay and the sun sank behind us, we watched a full moon rise in front of us, casting a soft light that sparkled over the calm water. We passed a sand bank where several boats were beached in the low tide. From there, we followed our guides and glided onto the southeastern edge of Crane Beach, parked our kayaks on a steep grade of sand, and gathered around a fire pit to sip hot chocolate and devour well-deserved desserts.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Under the darkening sky, we met Richard “Ozzie” Osborn, who has been running the trips around the Essex River Basin for 15 years. With sparks illuminating his face, Osborn told us how much of the area was part of the old summer estate of Chicago industrialist Richard T. Crane, a 2,800-acre property, much of which the family has given to a nonprofit land trust over the years.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“What’s crucial about the property as it is is that we’re in the main flyways for migrating shorebirds,” he said. “Some of these birds fly tundra to tundra, from the northern most part of North America to Patagonia.”</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He pointed across the beach and into the last embers of light as he explained how the trust has preserved much of the land and left it undeveloped. “It’s in its natural state, almost unscathed, which is really unique,” he said.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://merlinarchive.globe.com/THUMBS5/TDIR7171/PX00230_9.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While regaling us with stories and facts about the area, the sky faded to black, except for the bright moon rising higher in the sky.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We followed the moonlight back to the kayaks and shoved into the dark, flat water, where we crossed fast-moving currents flooding in from Ipswich Bay. We paddled into what felt like a star-filled void, where it was difficult to distinguish the sky from the water. We were silhouettes and kept from ramming each other with neon sticks glowing from the ends of our kayaks.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The more we paddled, the more it felt like we were weightless, floating in space. The strong current of the incoming tide made the rhythmic motion of paddling feel effortless, almost intoxicating.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was an entrancing peace, a kind that unites the brain and the body.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We cruised along the marshes, past the undeveloped islands, through the quiet of night, until we were back where we started, invigorated by the warm breeze, the warm water, and the warm feelings.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Osborn said he couldn’t recall a better night for kayaking in 15 years running the same trip.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“We got a special not to be on the water,” he said.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></i></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-45759001258912080602008-01-19T18:42:00.000-08:002014-01-19T18:42:58.146-08:00Novice at the Helm<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CAG_e0v8Ycs/UtyMowzS5GI/AAAAAAAAeHY/dMDiBk_9sV0/s1600/539w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CAG_e0v8Ycs/UtyMowzS5GI/AAAAAAAAeHY/dMDiBk_9sV0/s1600/539w.jpg" height="392" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #464646; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">Jamaica Pond offers many pleasures, including sailing, which Christina Close and her husband, Jay, enjoyed Wednesday. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white;">By<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span><span class="hit"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;</span></span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center;">July 3, 2010</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>JAMAICA PLAIN, Mass. --&nbsp;</b>Over the years, I have become acquainted with the trees surrounding<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Jamaica</span><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Pond</span>, although not intentionally. I have also learned the consequences of ripples spreading suddenly across the spring-fed waters and the value of such nautical terms as "Duck!'' "Brace for Impact!'' and "Please ignore that you're sitting in what seems like a bathtub.''<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I pass along this hard-earned knowledge in the selfish hope that you, dear reader, might stay away from one of the little-used amenities that make Boston such a luxurious place to live in the summer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For $15 an hour, the city offers residents with sufficient experience, or in my case sufficient ambition, the opportunity to rent sturdy, 15-foot sailboats on one of the area's more pristine bodies of water. Over the years, despite a few unintended collisions and some overindulgent heeling, sailing on<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Jamaica</span><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Pond</span><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>has provided me a spontaneous salve on many sticky afternoons, a hint of adventure in a secure place, and more than anything, an escape from the urban confines of the city.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Indeed, if you can rig the sails, thread the lines, and release the ties to clear the dock, it takes no more than a mild gust to send you to a place that feels faraway, even if the traffic on the Jamaicaway remains visible in the distance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the past six years, the city has leased its dock on<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Jamaica</span><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Pond</span><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>to Courageous Sailing, which rents six sailboats, among a small fleet of rowboats and kayaks, nearly every day between April and November.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are other places to rent boats in the city, including the Esplanade, Charlestown, and Dorchester. But sailing on the pond has its unique rewards - and challenges.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Annie Butts, director of the sailing program on<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Jamaica</span><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="hit">Pond</span>, appreciates them, perhaps, better than anyone. She knows the pleasures of plying the warm, silky waters, where double-crested cormorants mingle with snapping turtles.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Occasionally she gets to take a dip, so long as it's in the service of others. (The city, for obscure reasons, banned swimming in 1975.) One recent Saturday, she had to take the plunge to rescue four boats that had capsized.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">``It's great to sail here, because there isn't the traffic that you have on the Charles or the harbor,'' she says. ``But a lot of people underestimate what it takes to sail here, and when they don't pay attention, a puff [of wind] might make them dip the rails or turtle,'' which means taking on water or capsizing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The available 800-pound day sailers are prone to sudden shifts, given the unpredictability of the pond's wind patterns.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like others, I have learned this the hard way. With my mother and other loved ones aboard, I have sailed into trees. At other times, when the wind has died, I have had to jerk the tiller back and forth, effectively rowing back to the dock.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My passengers and I have had more than a few close encounters with the boom and learned how to bail out water.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Most of the time, however, I have found the breeze to be just right.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I usually go in the afternoon, when the wind tends to pick up and there's little wait for a boat. It takes a few minutes to rig the sails and a few minutes more to untie and glide off the dock, leaving all the stresses on land.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's easy to feel as if you're one with the wind, holding it in your hands as you grip the tiller. The boats, when they hit the right pocket of air, can cross from one side to the other of the 68-acre glacier remnant in a few minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The most difficult part is learning how to land. Near the dock, which juts out from a rocky shore beside the boathouse, there's little room for error.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I've seen some stall and drift to shore, others come in too fast and crash into other boats, and there are those who seem to sail in just right and then get carried away on a surge of air and sweep past the moorings.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On more than a few occasions, after basking in the accolades that come with being the captain of a safely steered vessel, I have seen such praise vanish with a muffed landing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The more practice, however, the smoother it goes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On a recent morning, when there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the water sparkled in the sun, I had the pond to myself. The breeze was steady and the boat sliced through the rippled water like a knife in warm butter.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I swept back and forth, oblivious to the teeming city beyond the tree line, inhaling the moist air and the peaceful lapping of the waves, until it was time to get back to land. I turned the tiller toward the boathouse and glided in on a southerly breeze, easing in to the dock without incident.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="loose" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As it often is, it was hard to step off the boat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>739</o:Words> <o:Characters>4216</o:Characters> <o:Company>The Boston Globe</o:Company> <o:Lines>35</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>9</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>4946</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>14.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> 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margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 10.5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="hit">David Abel</span><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">can be reached at<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="text-decoration: none;">dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></span></span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-1116559281241278542005-05-20T20:17:00.000-07:002014-01-27T16:48:44.552-08:00Holiness and Haggling in Turkey<br /><div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/image0-35.jpg" height="441" width="640" /></span></div></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;7/13/2003</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>ISTANBUL</strong> -- Naked, alone, and sweating after another sleepless night, I gaze at the shafts of light shooting through holes in the 500-year-old dome, waiting fretfully for the stocky man whose calloused hands will soon grind the tension from all my aching limbs. Lying on a large block of soapy marble, which feels like a sacrificial altar as steam rises all around, I fall into a groggy state where dreams blur with reality and the past slowly consumes the present.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As if experiencing them all over again, my mind flashes images of lava-sculpted canyons, turquoise lagoons, and relics of civilizations dating well before Christ. I smell the toasted pita breads, roasting shwarma, and the sacks of spices flaunted in the markets. I hear the high-pitched call to prayer ringing from the minarets, I taste the rush of honey oozing from a chunk of baklava, and I feel the warmth of the Mediterranean banish Boston to a distant memory.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These are the last hours of a whirlwind, 10-day tour of Turkey. Back in Istanbul after a long night on a crowded bus from the southern coast, a trip that briefly stranded me on the Asian side of the city, I'm in a bathhouse built before Columbus discovered America.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's early on a Sunday morning, and with tourism still suffering from the war in Iraq, I have this vast place to myself, and the movie playing in my mind.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It starts with a mix of holiness and haggling, mediated by small glasses of apple tea and belly dancing. The trip from Istanbul's massive millennium-old mosques to the Grand Bazaar may be short, but it takes a while to go from the grandeur of the Aya Sofya, a sprawling Roman Empire-era church converted into a mosque, to the maze of merchants peddling everything from pricey carpets to cheap pottery.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The contradictions are everywhere - and they are what make this continent-straddling city, and country, so alluring. The melange of Europe and Asia, or secular West and sacred Middle East, is visible in the McDonald's next to a mosque. Young women shrouded in headscarves shopping in music stores playing Eminem. Nearly pornographic movie posters beneath the ubiquitous minarets.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In this land of extremes, contradictions arise even in the most rudimentary communication. Of the few Turkish words I learn, the indispensable ones are cok guzel, "very beautiful or very nice," and sao ol, which literally means "stay alive" but translates into something between "no thanks" and "leave me alone."</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the film rolls in my brain, I'm on a ferry plying the Bosporus, both awed by its shimmering beauty and aghast at 3,000 years of blood spilled for control of this strategic waterway, which separates Europe and Asia by connecting the Mediterranean with the Black Sea. On the European side, I see the mosques and palaces of the Ottoman Empire towering over a jumble of ugly modern buildings. On the shores of Asian Istanbul, where fewer tourists venture, there is a similar cacophony, though with less grandeur and more fishing boats.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The image fades, it's now dark out, and I'm on a large bus, something like a gussied-up Greyhound with Turkish carpets on the floor and a stewardess serving a round-the-clock assortment of tea, fruitcakes, and a special lemon-scented cologne. The road is smooth as we barrel through the night into the nation's heartland. But sleeping proves difficult, especially with the hourly stops.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Speed is not a priority. With bus stations here like convenience stores in America - everywhere, always open, and always bustling - there is a good excuse for not rushing. Around 3 a.m., somewhere in the salt flats between Istanbul and Cappadocia, I open my crusty eyes to find a party. The early-morning revelers - scores of families, lovers, and solo travelers - are yapping over tea or raki, the smooth Turkish liquor. There are old men cooking kebabs and young children trying to sell me a visit to the bathroom, which they maintain for a fee.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From there, I am transported into a broad valley filled with apricot trees, vineyards, and almost every imaginable flower, all blooming in their spring splendor. On the horizon is a massive snow-capped volcano. Some 10 millions ago, </span><img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-3521.jpg" height="230" width="330" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">it erupted and left a warren of lava-shaped canyons and goopy rock formations, which one guidebook compares to the "Grand Canyon on acid." Burrowed inside many of the rocks, a soft, easily sculpted stone made of lava, ash, and mud, are countless caves where locals have lived for thousands of years.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of them houses the five-star hotel where I'm staying. Perched on a hill above Cappadocia, the views are only matched by the lavish meals and the attentive staff, with waiters so responsive that a fork set down between bites risks immediate replacement. For such luxury, courtesy of the War on Terror, which has left nearly the entire hotel vacant, I am set back $45 a night.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Following a small stream through one part of the valley, a friend and I arrive in a small, touristy town, where we stop to browse in a carpet shop. Before long, a salesman named Savas is giving us a tour, pouring us apple tea and explaining the differences between cheap wool kilims and silk masterpieces. When he gets the drift we are not the buying kind of customers, he has his driver take us a few miles away to the top of a red canyon, where he leads us on a three-hour hike across mahogany-colored rocks and fields full of irises and poppies. Then, back at his home in the carpet shop, he cooks us dinner, a crispy Turkish pizza prepared in a wood-burning oven.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I am about to leave this lush </span><img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/image0-362.jpg" height="230" width="330" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">fantasyland - there were moments I considered spending the rest of my life here - Savas suddenly appears at the bus station with a gift, his prayer beads. We hug and I'm on the road again, another all-night bus trip to an unknown city.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning, I awake to the smell of the sea. The dry air has given way to humidity and with beaches, yachts, and skin-baring sunbathers all around, the place has a much freer feel.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A bumpy ride on a dolmus, or microbus, takes me to the turquoise waters and white-sand peninsula surrounding the legendary Blue Lagoon in Oludeniz. There's a crowd of tourists, but when I glide through the pristine water, which is clear as glass, they seem as far away as the previous night's stressful ride. Then I am on a plateau above the lagoon, beyond several rocky hills covered with pine trees, walking among the ghostly remains of an abandoned town, where thousands of Greeks lived before Turks forced them out when they declared independence from Greek rule in 1923. A few hills beyond is Fethiye, one of the main ports on the Turkish Riviera, and I'm ambling along the crowded harbor, feeling like I'm running a gantlet as scores of aggressive restaurateurs beseech me and every passing tourist to dine with them. Further inland, there is the massive gorge in Saklikent, where a guide escorts me and a group of mostly burly British men through a muddy river that leads to a hidden waterfall.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As I'm feeling the frigid spray of the cascading water, something like a vice closes around my ankle and tugs me a few feet. I wake from my dreams at the bathhouse and stare up at the beefy, shirtless masseuse. If I'm not fully awake, he gets my attention by pouring a bucket of warm water over my head. Then he takes out something like a Brillo pad and begins rubbing off layers of my skin, as if he were trying to remove something sticky from the bottom of a pot. He douses me with more water and begins kneading every muscle in my body, cracking my back, and providing a perverse mix of pain and pleasure. When he is done, after scrubbing me with a bubble bath's worth of suds and washing it away with a combination of hot and cold water, he leaves me alone again.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still on my back on the warm marble, everything seems more vivid. I watch the beams of light slowly crawl across the cracked floor. I hear the drip-drop of the dozen surrounding fountains, which I like to think once bathed sultans. And then a strange sensation overcomes me, an inexplicable urge for an agnostic unaccustomed to religious feelings.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps it's primal, but suddenly I feel the desire to hum something holy, a prayer. And then it comes out, from a tune in my mind for anyone listening to hear, some hallowed hymn, which I repeat over and over until I fall asleep again. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><i>David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i><br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-1138828601223833272005-05-19T20:55:00.000-07:002014-01-01T19:53:13.380-08:00Racing Across China<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From Beijing to Hong Kong</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="384" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/925/973/400/63547/collage.jpg" width="640" /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Click here for more pictures from <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel/China">China</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel |&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Staff |&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1/29/2006</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Earplugs shoved in, eyes tightened against the fluorescent bulbs above, hacking, snoring, and bleating cellphones all around, we shoot through the frozen night, clanging past desolate fields and impossibly crowded cities.<br /><br />I curl up on what the Chinese call a hard sleeper, one of six coffin-sized boards stacked in our overnight train's doorless compartment, waiting for sleep to blur the 10-hour ride with my dreams.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Unable to move without knocking my head into the bunk above or plunging five feet below, I try to rest after racing through Beijing's massive, neon-lighted streets and crossing a sea of humanity. (Late on a Monday night, the sprawling train station everything in China feels gargantuan seems like New York's Penn Station at rush hour, only more crowded.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Three days into a three-week trip that would take us more than a thousand miles from the bare, stone-topped mountains surrounding Beijing to the chaos of the pollution-choked streets of Shanghai to the serene, sampan-lined beaches around Hong Kong my girlfriend and I have already learned a few lessons:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pointing to pinyin (the Roman letters spelling out Chinese characters) leaves most people as clueless as we are trying to read Chinese. City maps are about as useful for conveying distance as textbook pictures of the solar system (just crossing a street in Beijing, many of which are more than 14 lanes wide, not including the bike lanes on each side of the street, can feel like an epic journey). Northern China in the winter is about as temperate as the tundra. Oh, and everyone from grandmas to businessmen spits.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We might have discovered such things before leaving, but because my girlfriend had just landed a new job, we arranged the trip only five days before we left. We had long wanted to travel to China. And with luck finding reasonable fares $700 round trip from Boston to Beijing we applied for rushed visas and took off with no plan, other than to see as much as possible.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had always imagined China like Napoleon's sleeping dragon, a giant still burdened by a long history of authoritarianism and communism. Instead, we find a nation awakened as a superpower. (A few days after our arrival, a government report announces China's economy this year will exceed those of Britain and France, making it the world's fourth-largest, behind the United States, Japan, and Germany.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We also find that it's a place rife with irony and extreme contrasts. There are 2,000-year-old pagodas in the shadows of some of the world's largest skyscrapers. Tyrannical one-party rulers dissidents are routinely jailed struggle to control the chaos of 1.3 billion people. A new class of millionaires live large while some 100 million people remain mired in poverty, many unable to afford medical care.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></strong></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: 130%;">My first discovery is</span></strong> a Wi-Fi signal at the airport. The hourlong drive into traffic-clogged Beijing also offers glimpses of the country's latest great leap forward: countless new Audis and BMWs cruising state-of-the-art highways; a canopy of pollution stretching over the city like a neon halo; a horizon cluttered with so many high-rises, many of them recently built, it makes Boston seem like a village.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over three days in Beijing, we visit ornate Buddhist temples adjacent to ancient slums. We take 40-cent subway rides that put the T to shame. We get lost in dense crowds at tidy markets full of fake jade and Mao-waving watches. We sip green tea at restaurants whose windows advertise the carcasses of ducks, some next to a McDonald's or KFC.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We watch monks perform martial arts and acrobats contort their bodies in seemingly impossible positions. We brave the freezing winds under Mao Zedong's gaze on Tiananmen Square, a vast, mainly empty cement plaza, except for tourists, hawkers, and green-jacketed police. We tour the warren of old halls in the Forbidden City, making obligatory stops at the "four-star" toilet and Starbucks. We climb the pristine hills of Mutianyu to a restored portion of the Great Wall, a sight that lives up to all the superlatives. After enjoying the wintry solitude of one piece of the 4,100-mile delusion of various emperors' grandeur, we hop on an alpine slide down to the parking lot.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Groggy as dawn breaks and our train rolls into Nanjing, the capital at various times in China's history, we lug our backpacks into the cold of the sleek, new station. (For all their progress, it seems the Chinese have yet to master heating systems.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A few minutes later, in a taxi to the museum commemorating the Japanese invasion in 1937 (one of Nanking's periods as capital), we hear what sounds like air-raid sirens. I make a bad joke that the Japanese are back; in a few minutes, with hundreds of people lined up for a ceremony next to the museum, we learn it is the 68th anniversary of the attack. The occupation and systematic massacres left an estimated 300,000 Chinese dead.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spend the morning gaping at gruesome photos and mull it all over a tapas-like lunch of dainty, perplexing dishes. We later try out our five or so words of mispronounced Chinese on smiling, puzzled merchants and sneak into a regal villa honoring Sun Yat-sen, China's revered first president.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After yet another miscommunication, this one stranding us at the train station for a few hours, we take a two-hour trip east to a city called Suzhou, less than half the size of Beijing, with about 6 million people. We haggle to stay in what may be the planet's most elegant Sheraton a stately complex of humpback bridges, picturesque canals, and serene courtyards and spend the day roaming the city's renowned gardens, gawking at ancient pagodas, and passing on plentiful opportunities to buy silk.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></strong></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: 130%;">A few hours later, we hop</span></strong> on another train, this one little more than an hour east to Shanghai. When we arrive around midnight, China's largest city is ablaze with neon-lighted towers, and it all feels about as foreign as Times Square.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over three days, through a gnawing cold, we walk for miles, exploring the colonial buildings along the Bund and ascending to the top of the rocket-shaped Orient Pearl TV tower. We stroll through an old ghetto where the Japanese confined thousands of Jews during World War II and dine atop Pudong, a section of Shanghai where the only constant seems to be moving cranes and the flash of blowtorches used in building skyscrapers in every direction. We haggle in tourist-filled markets for knockoff bags and other baubles, and when my girlfriend leaves me to power shop on Nanjing Road, I spend an hour fending off a legion of prostitutes, who patrol the city's wide shopping corridor in high heels and long winter jackets.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We take breathers from the overwhelming pollution with forays into the city's sophisticated museums, where a certain freedom of expression thrives. At a small modern art museum, we watch a video of pigs feasting on a drunken man's table; at the urban planning museum, we stand in a wraparound video simulator that transports us to the future city; at a large history museum, we find ourselves dumbfounded at the spare-no-expense exhibits.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rundown and in need of clean air, we take a two-hour train ride south to Hangzhou, a lakeside city dating to at least 221 BC.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With hills ringing the large, placid West Lake, it's easy to understand why the Chinese call the city paradise, even in the dead of winter. We take a small ferry across the murky expanse and stop to explore several island gardens whose beauty is impervious to the cold. We eat "beggar's chicken," a local delicacy in which the bird is wrapped in lotus leaves and clay. (It's one of the few poultry dishes to survive the nationwide campaign to isolate the avian flu.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before heading out yet again, this time for the airport, we do something we haven't done much since arriving in China. We relax. We dry our rheumy eyes in the hotel's sauna, then devour dragon fruit, a prickly, pink-fleshed monster of a flower that tastes like a mix of kiwi and watermelon.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Later, we fly to Guangzhou, formerly called Canton, an enormous city of some 10 million people in southern China. For years the country's most prosperous city, replete with flyover highways, acres of malls, and smog-veiled skyscrapers, it looks a bit like Los Angeles. Even the warm air is similarly velvety.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></strong></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: 130%;">With only a short time left</span></strong>, we haul our increasingly heavy bags along narrow sidewalks to the closest bus stop. When we spy a large, modern bus in the parking lot, we jump on.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's time for Hong Kong.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Under a bright sun, we leave the congested city on a dizzying, three-hour ride south, one that would require clearing two frenzied customs stations with hourlong lines, switching buses three times, having our passports stamped twice, and stopping for heat-sensing cameras to check whether we have any sign of fever, perhaps the avian flu or SARS.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we finally arrive in Kowloon, the edge of the mainland just north of Hong Kong island, I quickly realize "one country, two systems," the former British colony's special status since China took over in 1997, means more than different currencies or a frontier dividing capitalism and communism.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There's the greater political freedom antigovernment protests in the parks and newspapers that print actual news. There's the beauty of the city's skyscrapers packed like a forest along the island's craggy hills. There's the human scale of the streets, many of which are lined by old banyan trees, lighted like day at night, and narrow enough that they don't require a marathoner's endurance to cross. There's also the ubiquitous English and slew of double-decker buses driving on the British side of the road, all providing a feeling of being at something more than a crossroads, a kind of prosperous merger of East and West.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After gorging on dim sum, basking in the skyline's laser light show's glow from the top of Victoria Peak, and negotiating a harbor cruise on an old sampan, we take a high-speed ferry though the South China Sea's bright blue waters to Macau.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On our short visit, we find that the 400-year-old former Portuguese colony, which also became Chinese territory in 1999, has more to offer than casinos.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are the restored churches and other anachronisms, such as signs everywhere still in Portuguese. A large museum compares everything from the history of Eastern and Western philosophy to the derivation of the word tea "cha" in Chinese and why it is pronounced either "cha" or "tea" in languages around the world. (The difference results from where in China traders first bought tea.) But Macau's most important cultural contribution, in my humble opinion, is its small, freshly baked almond cookies, which shopkeepers offer by the handful to lure visitors into their stores.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our spur-of-the-moment trip to China ends on a diversion.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In our rush to leave Boston, we had applied only for single-entry visas, not realizing that to return to the mainland, to fly home from Beijing, would require another visa. (The Chinese, to retaliate for the stiff price of US visas, would have charged us more than $100 each.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But we discover a way around the issue, without another Chinese visa.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We fly to Vietnam.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><em><br /></em></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></i><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>IF YOU GO:</strong>United and other airlines offer flights from Boston to Beijing, often with a stop in Chicago or San Francisco. Fares generally run more than $1,000, but deals on the Web can get close to $700. And if a Massport-Hainan Airlines plan gains Federal Aviation Administration approval, travelers will be able to fly directly from Boston to China aboard China's low-cost carrier by the end of the year.</span><br /><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></strong><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Where to stay</span></strong><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Marco Polo Hotels<br />www.marcopolohotels.com.<br />The Marco Polo Hongkong Hotel offered a large room with a king-size bed and postcard views of the skyline for $125 a night.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Grand Hyatt<br />Jin Mao Tower, 88 Century Blvd., Pudong, Shanghai<br />www.hyatt.com<br />The "highest hotel in the world" on the 53d to 87th floors is in the heart of Shanghai's financial district. The lobby has views of the Bund and Huangpu River. Rooms start at $250 a night.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Westin Shanghai<br />88 Henan Zhonglu<br />www.westin.com/shanghai<br />A modern hotel near the Bund and Nanjing Road, with a spa that offers after-hours de-stressing until midnight. Club deluxe rooms start at $350, including breakfast.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sheraton Suzhou<br />259 Xin Shi Lu<br />www.sheraton-suzhou.com<br />A deluxe, five-star hotel surrounded by magnificent gardens. Rates start at $150 a night, including breakfast.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><br /></strong></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Where to eat</strong><br />Beijing There are entire restaurants devoted to producing the city's most famous local dish, Beijing duck. Emphasis is on lamb, pork, and large, doughy dumplings. Staples are heavy noodles and breads rather than rice. Street food is plentiful, cheap, and of varying quality. Fast-food outlets such as KFC are ubiquitous.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Shanghai You'll find restaurants representing every regional Chinese fare, as well as cuisine from around the world. Here food is known for xiao long bao (steamed dumplings), hairy crab, and river fish. Its street food is the city's culinary claim to fame.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hong Kong is dizzying in its choices. Don't miss the dim sum palaces, which serve from midmorning to midafternoon. There are more than a thousand kinds of dim sum, and many restaurants prepare 100 varieties daily, serving them from carts, often steamed in bamboo baskets.</span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-1116559683399019222005-05-19T20:21:00.000-07:002014-01-01T19:54:54.860-08:00Fares of the Heart in Peru<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Testing a New Relationship on the Highs, Lows, Lumps, and Luxuries from Lima and Beyond<br /><img height="480" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/DSC00114.jpg" width="640" /><br />Click here for more pictures of <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/davidsabel/Peru">Peru</a>.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;11/07/2004<br /><br /><strong>LIMA</strong> -- Call me sadistic.<br /><br />We had met little more than a month before, but we had chemistry, the kind with sparks that could easily ignite. Things moved quickly, and we both saw the glimmer of potential. Enough that commitment-heavy words started slipping off each other's tongues.<br /><br />With infatuation often confused for love, I wanted to know whether our feelings had depth, whether they could survive the isolation of a desert, the climb up a mountain, the dislocation of an unknown culture.<br /><br />I wasn't being hyperbolic; I wanted a reality check.<br /><br />So I proposed a test of sorts, a trip, preferably to somewhere in the developing world where we might find ourselves stuck on long, unnerving bus rides or risk food poisoning or altitude sickness.<br /><br />Less than 10 weeks after we met, and both fluent in Spanish, we agreed to spend 10 days together in Peru. It would be a journey covering thousands of miles, with transportation including irritable, poorly trained horses, which took us from the highest navigable lake in the world to the deepest canyons, from icy rivers to hot springs, from the capital's seaside skyscrapers to the cobblestoned streets of centuries-old colonial cities.<br /><br />It would also, of course, be more time than we had ever spent together.<br /><br />She's a lawyer accustomed to long-term planning and glitzy hotels. I'm a reporter used to spontaneity and sleeping at hostels. The trip would require compromises, such as our ac commodations, which would range from the presidential suite of a five-star hotel to mangy inns where showers didn't guarantee hot water.<br /><br />Both in our early 30s and set in our ways, we might have driven each other nuts and ended up flying home separately. Neither of us knew what to expect. <br /><br /><strong>FLYING IN FROM</strong> different cities, we met in Lima, where I found her curled on a couch in the regal lobby of the Country Club hotel -- our first compromise -- her hazel eyes struggling to stay open after 2 a.m.<br /><br />The next morning, we set out on a tour of the capital, a sprawling metropolis of 7 million people. Through the mist, we saw a city bounded by a coastline of cliffs, colorful shanties crisscrossing denuded hills, and a canopy of dark clouds overhead, all of which made the August cool winter air feel heavy, damp, and stagnant. We devoured crusty empanadas at street-side panaderias, strolled across broad potholed boulevards and large plazas, where a small army of street vendors hawked everything from sugar cane juice to fresh papaya, and learned about decades of Marxist-inspired violence at an exhaustive seaside museum. At the end of our one day there, we sat for a meal that included Pisco sours, a grape brandy mixed with egg whites, and a platter of Anticuchos, cow hearts sprinkled with salt.<br /><br />Then, after a few hours of coping with interminable lines and other chaos at the airport, we left the cacophony of Lima for Cusco, the oldest continuously inhabited city in South America.<br /><br />At more than 10,000 feet, I immediately detected something strange about the capital of the Incas, the millennium-old indigenous empire eventually crushed by Spain. As we passed the ochre-roofed churches built on Incan ruins and browsed alpaca sweaters and the juicy peppino and granadilla fruits at the crowded markets, the bag on my back seemed to weigh more, my feet felt like cinder blocks, my head like a tightening vice. The altitude sickness eventually subsided, the result of tender care from my hardier companion, the magic of coca leaves (to which I developed a mild addiction), and the benefits of the most luxurious room at our five-star hotel.<br /><br />A 300-year-old former seminary, the Hotel Monasterio has a breakfast buffet that is about the best I've ever seen. In our first room, an elegant duplex, the staff sent us a platter of local fruit and a bouquet of roses and lined the bathroom with candles. They also drew us a bubble bath, which, with all the salts, oils, and multicolored rose petals scattered about, seemed like soaking in a latte, with whipped cream and sprinkles on top.<br /><br />The next night, a concierge asked whether we were on our honeymoon, an illusion possibly cast by the beaming grins fixed on our faces since we had checked in. Then, to our amazement, the staff upgraded us to the presidential suite, which typically costs $700 a night. We found the entrance at the end of a corridor filled with Renaissance-style paintings, the only suite with its own doorbell. Inside, beyond a living room with more fruit, flowers, and a bottle of champagne, we found cherubic figurines above a bed that could have fit a family of four, a marble bath with towel warmers, a private room with toilet and phone, and a patio overlooking a courtyard with a gurgling fountain.<br /><br />It was hard to leave, but with the US ambassador checking in after us, we reluctantly shipped out, assuming it would be downhill from there. <br /><br /><strong>FOR $50, WE HIRED</strong> a driver to take us through the Sacred Valley, a region of towering peaks, ancient salt mines, and a range of awe-inspiring Incan ruins, many carved into the land. We spent the next day on horseback, fording rivers and inspecting mud huts in a dry, rocky valley. Then we took the early-morning train to Aguas Calientes, the base for all trips to Machu Picchu. The two-hour ride took us past arid plains that resembled a desert, snow-capped glaciers that seemed to promise tundra, and the dense, verdant foliage of a jungle.<br /><br />When we reached Aguas Calientes, we had a choice: Take the bus up the spiraling road to the legendary "Lost City of the Incas," or climb on foot.<br /><br />Of course, we made our decision on level ground, well before eyeing the first of more than a thousand stone steps. As we trudged up the popsicle-shaped mountain, our water dwindling, our white skins turning bright red, and my sweetheart glowering and groaning about how I should leave her behind, that she would be better off jumping or lying down and waiting for wolves to relieve her misery, I kept thinking, "A crisis binds, doesn't it?"<br /><br />When we finally reached the summit, the well-manicured plateau and all the impossibly <img align="left" height="220" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/220/DSC00296.jpg" width="275" />assembled boulders appeared like heaven after ascending through hell. In short, we found a grandeur only hinted at in photos. About all the mysterious moss-covered arches, baths, and fort-like homes, I jotted this in my journal: "Beyond the $20 tollbooth lies the reality of some despot's dream / A heaven on Earth / Where the firmament is carved in stone / Where orchid gardens are groomed by llamas / Where pillowy clouds and daunting heights both camouflage and exalt / One peoples' attempt to create its own eternity."<br /><br />The next leg of our trip landed us near Peru's southern border with Bolivia. From the airport, we took a colectivo, or small bus, which slowly crowded with an impossible number of passengers, who squashed us between the lumpy seats and our bulky backpacks. Then a storm began, unleashing hail and lightning, and the dark, narrow road made imminent death seem possible. The two of us shared good, morbid laughs as we bumped along to Puno, the gateway to Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake and the reason we had come.<br /><br />Early the next morning, after a breakfast of cantaloupe smoothies and fried eggs at a less-than-luxurious inn the gold-toothed colectivo driver had recommended, we boarded a tourist-packed powerboat and watched the shore's toxic lime waters turn sapphire as we approached the center of the lake. We learned how the surrounding sand-covered hills produce some 6,000 varieties of potatoes.<br /><br />We saw how the indigenous Uros <img align="left" height="200" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/220/DSC004911.jpg" width="150" />walk on water, literally, by piling reeds in the shallows and building floating islands, complete with tepee-like homes. They live much the same as centuries before, with a few innovations like solar panels to power their stereos.<br /><br />After a frigid day on the vast lake, which spanned 3,300 square miles at an altitude higher than 12,000 feet, we longed for warmth. <br /><br /><strong>A HALF-HOUR FLIGHT</strong> later, we landed in Arequipa, the nation's second largest city, where many buildings are made of a white volcanic rock called sillar and an enormous snow-capped volcano dominates the horizon. We rushed from the airport to the bus station, to wait only long enough for a lonely teenage vendor to slip us a note suggesting we adopt her.<br /><br />When we eventually left for the Colca Canyon -- at 11,333 feet nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon -- we didn't realize it would make all the other trips seem, in comparison, like swan boats gliding across the pond in Boston's Public Garden. As the city gave way to the desert and the pavement turned to dirt, the old Greyhound-style bus chugged along the winding cliffside road, sometimes gaining air as we passed more than a few crosses, each indicating a quicker path to the bottom. The nausea set in only after the driver blasted the local version of country music, a screechy fusion of Mariachi ballads and Asian arias that every few minutes featured a woman's piercing screams.<br /><br />The four-hour jaunt ended when we arrived at a rustic row of huts perched above a shallow river, where we found a better cure for dizziness than coca leaves. The round pools of steamy water made us feel as if we were floating, the star-studded sky seemed like a glistening sea to stretch into. The hot springs brought us so much peace that the next morning, we skipped a condor excursion and spent much of the day soaking in the liquid bliss.<br /><br /><strong>WHEN WE RETURNED</strong> to Arequipa the next night, our last in Peru, we found a smoky bar, drank the local beer, and listened as a squeaky band laid waste to the Beatles.<br /><br />After they cleared out, the salsa started. It was then that I looked closely at the petite woman with the big smile in my arms. We had shared a range of highs and lows over 10 days. Everything from tears and death wishes to long laughs and deep solace.<br /><br />Alone on the dance floor, we peered at each other through the smoke, and our gaze deepened. It felt as if we were on a stage, under a warm spotlight. We hugged and kissed, and as I twirled her around, her smile widening with each turn, I realized my questions now had answers, that what we were experiencing went much deeper than infatuation.<br /><br />Watching her dimples expand, her mussed hair bounce off her shoulders, I couldn't escape the thought: I was in love.<br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: black;"></span></span></span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-1116559054949626692005-05-19T20:13:00.000-07:002014-01-01T19:59:17.165-08:00Cave Dwelling in Cappadocia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D7nPjmQoQmw/UsTj5FQVpDI/AAAAAAAAUfU/BiGjEk3TUtM/s1600/cappadocia-ephesus-pamukkale-package-tour-by-bus-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D7nPjmQoQmw/UsTj5FQVpDI/AAAAAAAAUfU/BiGjEk3TUtM/s640/cappadocia-ephesus-pamukkale-package-tour-by-bus-6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Staff &nbsp;|&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">9/03/2003</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>CAPPADOCIA, Turkey</strong> - When I arrived around dawn at the bus station, after a long, sleepless trip from Istanbul, I had little strength to fuss over a hotel. I just wanted a bed, a place to rest my head, where I could lie horizontal for a few uninterrupted hours.<br /><br />The night before, I had read about a few pensions in my guidebook. They seemed just right - not too expensive and funky - and they were caves.<br /><br />That's right: I wanted to stay in a cave. It's the thing to do in Cappadocia, a lush valley in central Turkey shaped by a volcanic eruption 10 million years ago. So I circled a few recommended caves. And in the morning, I would set off to what seemed to be the most appealing one.<br /><br />Shortly after arriving, I hoisted my heavy backpack onto an old van and left the station with a few tourists to find a place called the "Tuna Caves Pension."<br />We never made it there.<br /><br />On the way, we stopped at another hotel, which the driver and other tourists described as cozier than the cave I had dog-eared.<br /><br />It didn't take more than a quick glance to realize it wasn't quite the funky habitation I had in mind: It was dank, musty, and definitely uninviting. As groggy as I felt, I started thinking I would rather sleep on another bus than in some bat-infested, moldy cave.<br /><br />After inspecting the craggy interior of one room, I met a couple who had spent the previous night at a newly built hotel a few miles away, on a hill overlooking the valley. They raved about it. The views, they said, were to die for; the food was unparalleled. It was a five-star hotel, they said, and the best part was the price. Courtesy of the War on Terror, and of the recent routing of Saddam Hussein's military in Iraq, the place was empty. And the price had plummeted to just $45 a night.<br /><br />That last part really got my attention.<br /><br />So I climbed back into the van and told the driver I had changed my mind. I wanted to go to this place on the hill, in Uchisar, called the Museum Hotel.<br /><br />To say the least, I don't typically stay in five-star hotels. I'm the kind of guy who prefers to go camping or stay in a hostel than pay to sleep in some overpriced inn. But I have to say, without a doubt, this was the best decision I had made throughout my 10 days in Turkey. I knew that the moment I arrived.<br /><br />If anything, the couple had underplayed the beauty. In the distance, from the top of the hill, I could see the entire valley, the mahogany-colored canyons, the bizarrely goopy rock formations, the massive volcano at the edge of the horizon. The air was even different: A cool breeze banished the heat stifling much of the valley.<br /><br />It was as if I had suddenly walked into another universe. After an all-night bus trip squirming in an uncomfortable seat, it was as though I had become royalty, for just $45.<br /><br />I mentioned my hunger and the concierge had my dirty, sweat-stained backpack taken to my room. A bellhop escorted me to the patio, which overlooked all the grandeur of Cappadocia. Then they prepared to feed me.<br /><br />In minutes, a legion of traditionally dressed waiters and waitresses set a table, poured me apple tea, and served a meal of chicken and rice. For someone used to scrubbing his own dishes, it took some time to get used to the staff hovering over me as I ate, replacing my fork between bites. It didn't take too much time, however, and I feel comfortable saying it was one of the best lunches I've ever had.<br /><br />Still, it was nothing compared with breakfast and dinner. Breakfast included a buffet of fresh juices, recently harvested olives, a variety of feta cheeses, fruits, pastries, and just about anything I could have desired. Dinner included fresh salads; crusty, feta-filled hors d'oeuvres; large, meticulously prepared entrees; and desserts so good they defy adjectives.<br /><br />Yet the part that made it worth it was the room.<br /><br />A cave built into the side of a hill,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">my room didn't have any right angles. But it wasn't anything like the cave I had seen earlier. It had satellite TV, a king-sized bed with silk-smooth sheets, and a marble bath with Jacuzzi. There were also elegant paintings and other pricey pieces of art on the walls (thus giving the hotel its name), irregularly shaped windows that looked out on the valley, and an untold number of small perks - everything from a comfy robe and soft slippers to Turkish carpets lining the floor to a bottle of wine.<br /><br />In short, and this only slightly runs the risk of exaggeration, it seemed the way one might imagine heaven. And I say that without having entered the pool, which was under construction when I visited in June.<br /><br />Drifting off to sleep that night, I curled up in the smooth sheets and my head lay gently on the feathery pillow. I was as far away from the previous night's bus as I could be, and the big bed alone was enough for me to consider staying there for the rest of my trip. And then I started harboring visions of moving in, perhaps taking a job as a bellhop or a window cleaner. And if they let me, I might stay there for the rest of my life.<br /><br />Unfortunately, that never panned out.<br /><br />Back home in Boston, back at the job and in my one-bedroom apartment scrubbing dishes and doing my own laundry, I often think about that bed, and the view, and all the meals. It was good to be the king, at least for a while.<br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12884724.post-1116558452435743882005-05-19T19:57:00.000-07:002014-01-01T20:00:50.868-08:00Bedlam and Beatitude in Bangkok<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="430" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/image0-353.jpg" width="640" /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel &nbsp;| &nbsp;Globe Staff &nbsp;| &nbsp;11/30/2003</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>BANGKOK</strong> -- Even past midnight, well after the summer monsoons, the stagnant air slides under my clothes, spreading a damp, sticky coating that fills my pores.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's a greeting of sorts from this sprawling tropical metropolis, one of the hottest cities on the planet.<br /><br />I have spent more than 24 hours in planes and airports, so the soupy air almost feels pleasant, particularly when it moves. To do that, I hop a tuk-tuk, one of countless motorized rickshaws that provide an airy perch to breathe in all the chaos of the capital's crowded streets the fumes from the lack of catalytic converters, the steam of fried noodles sizzling in sidewalk stalls, the foul aroma of durian fruit, which smell like elephant dung.<br /><br />As my driver cuts through the traffic, I notice a halo of haze hanging over all of Bangkok, from the muddy, catfish-filled Chao Praya River to the narrow streets packed with wan-looking girls selling sex in Patpong to the massive markets in Chatuchak, where vendors hawk everything from Siamese cats to buckets of live eels to bags of fried grasshoppers.<br /><br />One of the first things a visitor notices is the incongruous relationship between the grandeur of preserved antiquity and the tackiness of encroaching modernity.<br /><br />Next to the majestic millennia-old wats, </span><img align="left" height="320" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-36.jpg" width="220" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">those often bejeweled temples housing immense golden sculptures of Buddha, are the neon lights of countless 7-Elevens and Dunkin' Donuts. Saffron-robed monks amble about in sandals, some chatting on cellphones. And on many corners, the state has erected life-size color photos of the king and queen, revered relics of another era who use their monarchy to promote a peaceful, if coup-plagued, democracy of 60 million people.<br /><br />My 10-day tour of Thailand begins on an overcrowded ferry that slowly groans down Bangkok's antique central artery, the chocolate-colored Chao Praya River.<br /><br />Before embarking, I stand on a pier with bamboo supports, watching children empty bags of bread crust into the river. Hundreds of catfish suddenly swarm to the surface, feeding in a frenzy that makes them look like piranhas.<br />From the river, when I can see above the crowd of commuters boxing me in, I glimpse Bangkok's future and its past.<br /><br />There's the towering, cabled bridge as sleek as Boston's newest span and the gleaming skyscrapers as opulent and modern as any in the States. Just off the river's banks are the nation's largest, most cherished temples, with one side giving rise to Wat Pho, home of the massive reclining Buddha and neighbor to the glittering, if overwhelming, Grand Palace, and the other to Wat Arun, the ceramic-covered temple of dawn. Floating along the center of the busy waterway, where rusting warships putter past motor-powered gondolas and children ignore the sludge to swim with the catfish, are giant, trash-filled barges, adding their pungency to the humid breeze.<br /><br />Later, I take the city's new sky train, a smooth-running railway rising some hundred feet over the clogged streets, to the Chatuchak market, a world of hundreds of little worlds that would take days, maybe weeks, to explore.<br /><br />One section of the market features a kind of zoo, but here the animals monkeys, rabbits, snakes, </span><img align="left" height="320" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/image0-372.jpg" width="250" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">everything from frogs to ferrets and puppies ranging from beagles to bulldogs are for sale. In another part, a warren of small restaurants and fast-food takeouts serve up some of the country's spiciest dishes: unripe mangoes dipped in chili powder, chili-filled pad thai, hot and sour soup diced with small green chilies that seem to explode in your mouth. And stall after stall provides the opportunity to buy pirated DVDs and CDs, orchids and other exotic flowers, large Buddha statues, toy guns, and porn.<br /><br />If Bangkok is indeed the world's hottest city, as some surveys claim, the market feels like standing on a planet closer to the sun. To air off, I take another tuk-tuk, and eventually find my way to the infamous Patpong district. The sun by now has disappeared, but as I wait to meet a few tourists and their Thai friends, the air-conditioning beckons from the ubiquitous 7-Elevens seemingly more than in any city I have ever visited.<br /><br />Unlike the red-light districts of Europe, where the state keeps things relatively tidy and there are fewer accounts of forced prostitution, the narrow streets of Patpong are a free-for-all. Tuk-tuk drivers promise to escort the throng of Western visitors to "pretty ladies," random men surreptitiously flash signs reading "SEX, SEX," and young women in black halter tops solicit with offers for "massages" and tickets to watch them do obscene things with ping-pong balls.<br /><br />The bedlam of Bangkok, a city of 6 million people that seems to go on and on, has a way of grating quickly, even on a tourist only gawking. So the next morning, for less than a dollar, I take a bus an hour and half to Ayutthaya, the former capital.<br /><br />Before renting a pair of old, battered bicycles, a new friend and I sit under the scorching sun for a quick lunch of fried eggs and noodles. Well-fed, we tour the spired shrines and regal palaces dating to the 14th century. We dodge elephants on the road and stay hydrated with little bottles of a potent, sugar-filled energy drink.<br /><br />That evening, after a show of fireworks over the Chao Praya in Bangkok a tribute to President Bush and more than a dozen heads of state in town for a summit among Pacific Rim countries I grab my backpack from the guesthouse where I'm staying and catch a cab back to the airport.<br /><br />I'm headed north to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second city. It is near the border with Burma and Laos, and in the shadow of the region's giants, India and China, which for centuries have influenced Indochina.<br /><br />Over the next five days, I indulge in the other side of Thailand the peaceful, </span><img align="left" height="320" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-361.jpg" width="200" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">sybaritic side. To shed my lingering jet lag, I take advantage of the two-hour massages available throughout the city, for as low as 200 baht, or $5. I join treks through the jungle, ride elephants, take bamboo rafts and rubber rafts down white-water rivers. I climb 8,415 feet to the top of Doi Inthanon, the country's highest mountain, swim beneath waterfalls straight out of paradise, and tour local villages where Burmese and Chinese refugees have brought cultures that have changed little over centuries.<br /><br />Between a regimen of rice noodles, tongue-lashing curries, and banana shakes meals that rarely cost more than 100 baht I attend a "Meet the Monk Night" at a local Buddhist monastery, observe a Thai boxing class , and spend the night at a family's home to learn Thai cooking.<br /><br />I meet people from around the world in Chiang Mai and sleep only a few hours a night. There's so much to do in such a short time, and I try to lap it up.<br /><br />This city in the north, on the edge of so much beauty, where doors open on every block to something strange and inviting, where locals invariably greet you with a smile, and where all the senses are easily roused, strikes me as a place I could stop and live for a while. And many Westerners seem to have never left.<br /><br />But there's another plane to catch. The family that owns and lives at my guesthouse, which feels like home after only a few days, serves me a quick breakfast of banana pancakes, and then I'm off, back to the hothouse of Bangkok.<br /><br />With only a day left, and a flight to Boston that leaves before dawn the next morning, I store my bag at the airport and set out into the capital again, hoping to grasp onto this city before it begins feeling like a dream.<br /><br />I walk through the Sunday markets again, eating as much as my stomach will bear, tour the glittering temples of the Grand Palace, where I find the gleaming Emerald Buddha, Thailand's most sacred Buddhist statue since an abbot discovered it in 1434. I walk the city, from the backpacker haven of Khaosan Road, to Ratchadamnoen Klang Ave., Bangkok’s Champs Elysee, to the teeming sidewalks of Chinatown, until my feet burn from blisters.<br /><br />Around midnight, exhausted, I stop for a massage in a well-lit building off an alley in Chinatown, where a doughy 70-year-old woman lifts me up with the balls of her feet. Two hours later, with the kinks and soreness gone, I take a cab back to Khao San Road, where a party between "farang," as foreigners are called, and locals lasts through dawn.<br /><br />I take a seat at a bar for my final meal </span><img align="left" height="250" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/image0-363.jpg" width="300" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">in Thailand, and watch a parade of drunken foreigners, vendors, and prostitutes mix it up in what from a distance, with heavy eyes, looks like a carnival. Large German tourists compete for who can eat the most crunchy insects and dried worms. Vendors hawk everything from noodles to tattoos to gewgaws. And the night's unlucky, or hardest working, prostitutes stroll around, propositioning any man who meets their gaze.<br /><br />When a short woman in a long shirt glides past, holding a bouquet of multicolored balloons, it feels like my cue. I finish off my Singha beer, pay my bill, and hail a cab to the airport. As I leave the steam bath of Bangkok, with the sun inching its way over the horizon, I take one more scan of the hazy horizon and offer a "sawitdeecop," or goodbye, to the night.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>David Abelnoreply@blogger.com